An appeal on patriotic grounds of wounded national pride, to the common run who have no trained sense of punctilio, by the gentlemanly responsible class who have such a sense, backed by assurances that the national prestige or the national interests are at stake, will commonly bring a suitable response.

It is scarcely necessary that the common run should know just what the stir is about, so long as they are informed by their trusted betters that there is a grievance to redress.

In effect, it results that the democratic nation's affairs are administered by a syndicate composed of the least democratic class in the population.
Excepting what is to be excepted, it will commonly hold true today that these gentlemanly governments are conducted in a commendably clean and upright fashion, with a conscious rectitude and a benevolent intention.
But they are after all, in effect, class governments, and they unavoidably carry the bias of their class.

The gentlemanly officials and law-givers come, in the main, from the kept classes, whose living comes to them in the way of income from investments, at home or in foreign parts, or from an equivalent source of accumulated wealth or official emolument.

The bias resulting from this state of the case need not be of an intolerant character in order to bring its modicum of mischief into the national policy, as regards amicable relations with other nationalities.