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ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

private bodies, such as the East India Company ,they were already frequent in the eighteenthcentury. But during the nineteenth centurythey developed a new and increased importance,and had, by the beginning of the twentieth,divided the propertied classes into two groups—the “business men” and the “investors”—with partly divergent interests. The divisionwas not sharp as between individuals; for busi-ness men might be investors also, and in-vestors might hold ordinary shares; but thedivision was nevertheless real, and not the lessimportant because it was seldom noticed.

By this system the active business class couldcall to the aid of their enterprises not only theirown wealth but the savings of the whole com-munity; and the professional and propertiedclasses, on the other hand, could find an em-ployment for their resources, which involvedthem in little trouble, no responsibility, and (itwas believed) small risk.

For a hundred years the system worked,throughout Europe , with an extraordinary suc-cess and facilitated the growth of wealth on anunprecedented scale. To save and to investbecame at once the duty and the delight of alarge class. The savings were seldom drawnon, and, accumulating at compound interest,made possible the material triumphs which wenow all take for granted. The morals, thepolitics, the literature, and the religion of theage joined in a grand conspiracy for the pro-motion of saving. God and Mammon were