the
favourite hypocrisies of the stupid, the pretence of envying the poor.
I have seen a merchant grow suddenly eloquent as he described the
happy lot of the working-man, who had nothing to do but draw his
wages, and compared it with the anxious life of the employer, who had
all the cares and responsibilities of the business on his shoulders.
The rich never feel so good as when they are speaking of their
possessions as responsibilities. Hear a mistress set forth the
advantages of the life of a servant-girl--how she not only gets higher
wages than servants ever got before, but think of the food, and no
rent to pay! She even becomes mawkish over the fortune of a girl who
is too poor to be called upon to pay rates and taxes. Alas, these
idylls of the kitchen are all written in the drawing-room. If a
servant's life were all a matter of freedom from rent and rates and
taxes and the worries of making both ends meet on a thousand a year,
the idylls would be apt enough; but it is just possible that even to
make both ends meet on twenty-five pounds a year may have its own
difficulties. Certainly one has a right to suspect these ladies who
glorify the life of the cook and the parlour-maid. I will refuse to
believe in them till I hear that one of them has run away from her
husband to take one of those sinecures advertised in the domestic
service columns of the _Morning Post_. But, perhaps, their sense of
duty is too strong to allow them to fly from their responsibilities in
that way.

Stupidity might be defined as resignation to other people's
misfortunes. Alternatively, it is a way of regarding comforts as
responsibilities and of getting out of one's uncomfortable
responsibilities altogether. There is no greater enemy of change. For,
granted enough stupidity, it is easy to believe that Hell itself is
Heaven. It is the stupidity of the rich, rather than deliberate
heartlessness, that permits so many of them to live cheerfully on
ill-paid labour and slum rents. Fortunately the cheerful dullness of
rich people is rarer than it was a century ago. Then it was reinforced
by political economy which regarded transactions in human beings in
much the same light as transactions in pounds of tea. Our first
awakening to the right of other people to live happened just before we
gave up cannibalism. The second happened just before we gave up
slavery. The third will happen just before we give up capitalism.
Obviously, it is only our stupidity