a thing that no old world property ever was.
But, in spite of its widely different nature, the laws of inheritance
that the social necessities of the old order of things established have
been applied to this new species of possession without remark. It is
indestructible, imperishable wealth, subject only to the mutations of
value that economic changes bring about. Related in its character of
absolute irresponsibility to this shareholding class is a kindred class
that has grown with the growth of the great towns, the people who live
upon ground rents. There is every indication that this element of
irresponsible, independent, and wealthy people in the social body,
people who feel the urgency of no exertion, the pressure of no specific
positive duties, is still on the increase, and may still for a long time
increasingly preponderate. It overshadows the responsible owner of real
property or of real businesses altogether. And most of the old
aristocrats, the old knightly and landholding people, have, so to speak,
converted themselves into members of this new class.

It is a class with scarcely any specific characteristics beyond its
defining one, of the possession of property and all the potentialities
property entails, with a total lack of function with regard to that
property. It is not even collected into a distinct mass. It graduates
insensibly into every other class, it permeates society as threads and
veins of gold permeate quartz. It includes the millionaire snob, the
political-minded plutocrat, the wealthy sensualist, open-handed
religious fanatics, the "Charitable," the smart, the magnificently dull,
the great army of timid creatures who tremble through life on a safe
bare sufficiency,[23] travellers, hunters, minor poets, sporting
enthusiasts, many of the officers in the British Army, and all sorts and
conditions of amateurs. In a sense it includes several modern royalties,
for the crown in several modern constitutional states is a _corporation
sole_, and the monarch the unique, unlimited, and so far as necessity
goes, quite functionless shareholder. He may be a heavy-eyed sensualist,
a small-minded leader of fashion, a rival to his servants in the gay
science of etiquette, a frequenter of race-courses and music-halls, a
literary or scientific quack, a devotee, an amateur anything--the point
is that his income and sustenance have no relation whatever to his
activities. If he fancies it, or is urged to it by those wh