IN THE NEAR FUTURE. 607 



the actions and reactions of political parties; and in the 

 changes, now towards increase of restraints on men and now 

 towards decrease of them, one of the slowest and widest 

 rhythms is exhibited. After centuries during which coer 

 cive rule had been quietly diminishing and had been occa 

 sionally made less by violence, there was reached in the 

 middle of our century, especially in England, a degree of 

 individual freedom greater than ever before existed since 

 nations began to be formed. Men could move about as 

 they pleased, work at what they pleased, trade with whom 

 they pleased. But the movement which in so large a meas 

 ure broke down the despotic regulations of the past, rushed 

 on to a limit from which there has commenced a return 

 movement. Instead of restraints and dictations of the old 

 kinds, new kinds of restraints and dictations are being 

 gradually imposed. Instead of the rule of powerful politi 

 cal classes, men are elaborating for themselves a rule of 

 official classes, which will become equally powerful or prob 

 ably more powerful classes eventually differing from those 

 which socialist theories contemplate, as much as the rich and 

 proud ecclesiastical hierarchy of the middle ages differed 

 from the groups of poor and humble missionaries out of 

 which it grew. 



