ussex may lawfully own the whole of Essex;
and that the Marquis of Cornwall may own all the hills and valleys so
long as they are not Cornish.

The clue to all this tangle is as simple as it is terrible. If England
is an aristocracy, England is dying. If this system IS the country,
as some say, the country is stiffening into more than the pomp and
paralysis of China. It is the final sign of imbecility in a people that
it calls cats dogs and describes the sun as the moon—and is very
particular about the preciseness of these pseudonyms. To be wrong, and
to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. The disease
called aphasia, in which people begin by saying tea when they mean
coffee, commonly ends in their silence. Silence of this stiff sort is
the chief mark of the powerful parts of modern society. They all seem
straining to keep things in rather than to let things out. For the kings
of finance speechlessness is counted a way of being strong, though it
should rather be counted a way of being sly. By this time the Parliament
does not parley any more than the Speaker speaks. Even the newspaper
editors and proprietors are more despotic and dangerous by what they do
not utter than by what they do. We have all heard the expression "golden
silence." The expression "brazen silence" is the only adequate phrase
for our editors. If we wake out of this throttled, gaping, and wordless
nightmare, we must awake with a yell. The Revolution that releases
England from the fixed falsity of its present position will be not less
noisy than other revolutions. It will contain, I fear, a great deal of
that rude accomplishment described among little boys as "calling names";
but that will not matter much so long as they are the right names.

THE GARDENER AND THE GUINEA

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an English Peasant.
Indeed, the type can only exist in community, so much does it depend on
cooperation and common laws. One must not think primarily of a French
Peasant; any more than of a German Measle. The plural of the word is its
proper form; you cannot have a Peasant till you have a peasantry. The
essence of the Peasant ideal is equality; and you cannot be equal all by
yourself.

Nevertheless, because human nature always craves and half creates
the things necessary to its happiness, there are approximations and
suggestions of the possibility of such a race even here. The nearest
approach I know to th