But it would be hasty to conclude that with the coalescence of these nations under one paramount control the need of creating notoriety and prestige for this resulting central establishment by the consumption of decorative superfluities would likewise decline.

The need of such dignity and magnificence is only in part, perhaps a minor part, of a defensive character.

For the greater part, no doubt, the motive to this conspicuously wasteful consumption is personal vanity, in Imperial policy as well as in the private life of fashion,--or perhaps one should more deferentially say that it is a certain range of considerations which would be identified as personal vanity in case they were met with among men beneath the Imperial level.

And so far as the creation of this form of "good-will" by this manner of advertising is traceable to such, or equivalent, motives of a personal incidence, the provocation to economy along this line would presumably not be a notable factor in the case.

And one returns perforce to the principle already spoken of above, that the consumptive need of superfluities is indefinitely extensible, with the resulting inference that nothing conclusive is to be said as to the prospective magnitude of this item in the Imperial bill of expense, or of the consequent pecuniary burdens which it would impose on the underlying peoples.
* * * * * So far the argument has run on the pecuniary incidence of this projected Imperial dominion as it falls on the underlying community as a whole, with no attempt to discriminate between the divergent interests of the different classes and conditions of men that go to make up any modern community.