SIX MAJOR PROPHETS
than seven. What seriously aggravates the evil is the whole trend of social legislation. Social reform costs money, and the money is raised by taxation, which bears very hardly on the middle classes, who cannot curtail luxuries like the rich, and will not lower their standard of comfort. They meet the extra expense, therefore, by further postponing the age of marriage, and further reducing their output of children. One of the chief effects, therefore, of our present methods of improving social conditions is to deteriorate the race. And this in a twofold manner: they eliminate the middle class, and they promote the survival of the unfit and defective.
It is perfectly possible, therefore, to tax the middle classes out of existence. Indeed, it has been done. History exhibits a great object-lesson in the decline of the Roman empire. This appears to have been mainly due to an unscientific system of taxation which crushed the middle class and left no breeding ground for ability and ambition between the millionaire nobles, who had nothing to rise to, and the pauperised masses, who had no chance of rising. Consequently, the empire had to take from without its borders the men it needed to conduct its military and civil administration. The barbarians alone could furnish the men to run the empire, and consequently the barbarians inevitably came to overrun the empire.
The Great War which he could not foresee has immeasurably accelerated the degenerative process which he foretold. The death roll of university students and graduates, representing, however inadequate the examination system, a selected class
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