THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 223 



Not only in politics of a period not more ancient than the last 

 election, but, we are afraid, in Nonconformist pulpits, types 

 deserving of the anger of a Ulysses are also to be found. The 

 sterner but loftier sentiment of three generations back would have 

 made short work of that degenerate type of leader which we now 

 usually call a demagogue. That these men escape punishment 

 and suppression, not only in England, but in most of Western 

 Europe, is one of the signs of the weakening and degeneration of 

 national tone. And this tone, we are afraid, but reflects the 

 intellectual attitude of the nation which tolerates it. Whether 

 this is due to an inherent incapacity to foresee its dangerous 

 consequences or to an innate slothfulness that must see the very edge 

 of the precipice before it will resort to action, time and the result 

 can alone decide. In lower walks of social life the same success 

 of degenerate types is seen. They reap the fruits of harvests 

 which others have sown. They are accommodated, clothed, 

 washed, and fed in palatial workhouses ; they are treated with 

 the minutest care and the best skill in infirmaries, which are much 

 more than comfortable ; their sUghtest ailment is attended to with 

 expedition and dispatch ; they are visited by district visitors, 

 and attended by district nurses ; charitable institutions vie with 

 each other in relieving their merited miseries ; religious bodies 

 convert them into cunning hypocrites, so that every family contains 

 a Roman Cathohc, an Anglican, an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, a 

 Methodist, a Baptist, a Calvinist, a Jesuit, a Wesleyan, a Primitive 

 Methodist, and a Jew. These f amihes doubtless would also contain a 

 Mahommedan, a Buddhist, a Confucianist, and a Laotryist, but that 

 these are creeds outside the range of charitable disbursements in 

 this country. Their children are educated for nothing. An 

 attempt is made to shoot them up the social rampart against their 

 wills in a remarkably expeditious hft, called " Scholarships." 

 They are fed for nothing and invited to come again. At some- 

 body else's cost, they are medically inspected, the only intelhgible 

 reason for which is that more officials — another degenerate type 

 of citizen — may be given employment ; for certainly we cannot 

 suppose that a cleft palate, a congenitally malformed heart or 

 brain, a club foot or scattered and prematurely-decayed teeth 

 are going to be remedied by a doctor's inspection. Not only are 

 we not satisfied in a futile medical inspection, but now we are 

 going to medically treat them for ills which cannot be cured. 

 And so on, doing everything for them — even liberating them from 

 prison when a Home Secretary, dazzHng in the limelight, pays a 

 visit to the prisons, never remembering that the leopard cannot 

 change his spots, and that where we have social chamoeleons, 

 the birch sometimes succeeds in obtaining the requisite change of 

 colour where peurile sentiment fails. 



