2l6 ENGLISH SAGA

his most elementary obligations to his fellows. He could not
only grow rich by such means. He could grow immensely
powerful.

The break-up of the medieval church' had transferred power
from the Christian state, with its theoretic moral control over all
human economic activities, to the landowner, who though he
may have begun as an avaricious courtier and a plunderer of
monastic lands, was gradually transmuted by the magic of the
English countryside and the personal responsibility attaching to
his rustic form of wealth into the country gentleman. In less
than two centuries the hard, grasping usurer of Tudor times had
grown into Sir Roger de Coverley. But by that time the pursuit
of wealth was already taking new forms. The great fortunes of
the eighteenth century were made by overseas trade. The Turkey
merchant and the East India nabob were the pioneers of the new
national economy. They also were absorbed by marriage and
purchase into the ranks of the landed gentry until in the early
nineteenth century their place was taken by still newer leaders—
the industrialists and shipowners, the capitalists of coal, cotton
and iron.

The principle of limited liability now set up another arbiter of
economic society. The company promoter—Sir Gorgias Midas of
du Maurier's drawings and uncle Ponderevo of Wells's romance
—was the social wonder of the last years of the old and the first of
the new century. Before his glittering if nebulous throne all
who had money to invest prostrated themselves, lured by his
promise of quick and easy profits. His craft consisted in raising
money on loan to float or purchase commercial concerns on
favourable terms and in subsequently disposing of them
at a profit, not necessarily by developing their productive
capacity but by enhancing their market value. He raised the
latter by the arts of display and suggestion as* a stock breeder
raises a fat pig. His journeymen were advertisers, publicity
agents, stockbrokers and share pushers. If in the course of his over
sanguine efforts to boost them, his concerns collapsed before they
were ripe for selling—and-in his early days they frequently did—
he could escape under cover of limited liability ^ wind up the
company and with the full blessing of the law start again. The
burden was borne by the company's creditors and by such credu-
lous investors as, allured by his axts, had bought their shares at
311 exaggerated price.