ANTICIPATIONS
localised recognition of the "custom of the country," cannot permanently avail. Statesmen will have to face the alternative of either widening the permissible variations of the marriage contract, or of acute racial and religious stresses, a vast variety of possible legal betrayals, and the appearance of a body of self-respecting people outside the law and public respect, a body that will confer a touch of credit upon, by sharing the stigma of, the deliberately dissolute and criminal. And whether the moral law shrivels relatively by mere exclusiveness—as in religious matters the Church of England, for example, has shrivelled to the proportions of a mere sectarian practice—or whether it broadens itself to sustain justice in a variety of sexual contracts, the net result, so far as our present purpose goes, will be the same. All these forces, making for moral relaxation in the coming time, will probably be greatly enhanced by the line of development certain sections of the irresponsible wealthy will almost certainly follow.
Let me repeat that the shareholding rich man of the new time is in a position of freedom almost unparalleled in the history of men. He has sold his permission to control and experiment with the material wealth of the community for freedom—for freedom from care, labour, responsibility, custom, local usage and local attachment. He may come back again into public affairs if he likes—that is his private concern. Within the limits of the law and his capacity and courage, he may do as the imagination of his heart directs. Now such an experimental and imperfect creature as man, a creature urged by such imperious
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