It is not a matter on which one prefers to dwell, but it can do no harm to take note of the fact for once in a way, that these several national establishments of the democratic order, as they are now organised and administered, do somewhat uniformly and pervasively operate with an effectual view to the advantage of a class, so far as may plausibly be done.

They are controlled by and administered in behalf of those elements of the population that, for the purpose in hand, make up a single loose-knit class,--the class that lives by income rather than by work.

It may be called the class of the business interests, or of capital, or of gentlemen.

It all comes to much the same, for the purpose in hand.
The point in speaking of this contingent whose place in the economy of human affairs it is to consume, or to own, or to pursue a margin of profit, is simply that of contrasting this composite human contingent with the common man; whose numbers account for some nine-tenths or more of the community, while his class accounts for something less than one-tenth of the invested wealth, and appreciably less than that proportion of the discretionary national establishment,--the government, national or local, courts, attorneys, civil service, diplomatic and consular, military and naval.

The arrangement may be called a gentlemen's government, if one would rather have it that way; but a gentleman is necessarily one who lives on free income from invested wealth--without such a source of free, that is to say unearned, income he becomes a decayed gentleman.