They would, as the Victorian peace teaches, necessarily have the assistance of a trained corps of experts in unproductive consumption, the first and most immediate of whom would be those whom the genial phrasing of Adam Smith designates "menial servants." Beyond these would come the purveyors of superfluities, properly speaking, and the large, indeed redundant, class of tradespeople of high and low degree,--dependent in fact but with an illusion of semi-dependence; and farther out again the legal and other professional classes of the order of stewards, whose duty it will be to administer the sources of income and receive, apportion and disburse the revenues so devoted to a traceless extinguishment.
There would, in other words, be something of a "substantial middle class," dependent on the wealthy and on their expenditure of wealth, but presumably imbued with the Victorian middle-class illusion that they are of some account in their own right.

Under the due legal forms and sanctions this, somewhat voluminous, middle-class population would engage in the traffic which is their perquisite, and would continue to believe, in some passable fashion, that they touch the substance of things at something nearer than the second remove.

They would in great part appear to be people of "independent means," and more particularly would they continue in the hope of so appearing and of some time making good the appearance.

Hence their fancied, and therefore their sentimental, interest would fall out on the side of the established law and order; and they would accordingly be an element of stability in the commonwealth, and would throw in their weight, and their voice, to safeguard that private property and that fabric of prices and credit through which the "income stream" flows to the owners of preponderant invested wealth.
Judged on the state of the situation as it runs in our time, and allowing for the heightened efficiency of large-scale investment and consolidated management under the prospective conditions of added pecuniary security, it is to be expected that the middle-class population with "independent means" should come in for a somewhat meager livelihood, provided that they work faithfully at their business of managing pecuniary traffic to the advantage of their pecuniary betters,--meager, that is to say, when allowance is made for the conventionally large expenditure on reputable appearances which is necessarily to be included in their standard of living.

It lies in the nature of this system of large-scale investment and enterprise that the (pecuniarily) minor agencies engaged on a footing of ostensible independence will come in for only such a share in the aggregate gains of the community as it is expedient for the greater business interests to allow them as an incentive to go on with their work as purveyors of traffic to these greater business interests.
The current, and still more this prospective, case of the quasi-self-directing middle class may fairly be illustrated by the case of the American farmers, of the past and present.