ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

3H

the ordinary course of affairs are mainly auto-nomous within their prescribed limitations, butare subject in the last resort to the sovereigntyof the democracy expressed through Parliament.

I propose a return, it may be said, towardsmediaeval conceptions of separate autonomies.But, in England at any rate, corporations are amode of government which has never ceased tobe important and is sympathetic to our institu-tions. It is easy to give examples, from whatalready exists, of separate autonomies whichhave attained or are approaching the mode Idesignate—the Universities, the Bank of Eng-land , the Port of London Authority, even per-haps the Railway Companies.

But more interesting than these is the trendof Joint Stock Institutions, when they havereached a certain age and size, to approximateto the status of public corporations rather thanthat of individualistic private enterprise. Oneof the most interesting and unnoticed develop-ments of recent decades has been the tendencyof big enterprise to socialise itself. A pointarrives in the growth of a big institution—par-ticularly a big railway or big public utility enter-prise, but also a big bank or a big insurancecompany—at which the owners of the capital,i.e. the shareholders, are almost entirely dis-sociated from the management, with the resultthat the direct personal interest of the latter inthe making of great profit becomes quite second-ary. When this stage is reached, the generalstability and reputation of the institution are