to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.'
He went further. Even for a generalization, though, it conveys a truth in a way that is detrimental to our understanding of that same truth, because it it is a blanket condemnation of excessive virulence, in that there have always been rich people who have been more generous with their wealth to people in need than the tax system required, and not to vanity projects, such as art galleries and museums, in their own honour. Chesterton said that the rich in every country were the scum of the earth.
When I said that, limited though it was in conveying a partial truth in a savage way, I meant that there is a marked propensity on the part of the richest, to corrupt those below them in the pecking order of idolatry, influencing them, against their better nature, to cooperate with themselves in pushing an agenda of open-ended greed. I believe that is what meant.
There were a few Tory grandees, the so-called, Wets, for whom the motto, 'Noblesse Oblige' still meant something, and who couldn't stomach the immiseration of the most economically-vulnerable families and individuals by Lady Cardboard's misunderstanding of St Francis of Assissi's love of poverty, and were sacked from the Cabinet and shifted away from engagement with economic policy. Unsurprisingly, guttersnipes thrived under her ladyship.
Not that all the rich are wicked, but that, objectively, even though the hearts of many of them will not be as black as Newgate's knocker, they support the billionaire class, most of whom would be the low-lifes to whom Chesterton referred. I wonder, particularly when they reach their sixties, if the latter really think they will live for ever; and reflect whether - since they evidently don't believe Christ's words in Matthew 25 - they really think that at that stage, it's worth their continuing to 'stiff' the poor, if continuing to do so, will ineluctably entail for them an existence of everlasting misery and terrible torment, heightened by the sight in the distance of the eternity of bliss of the virtuous /penitent, which they themselves might have enjoyed.
How prophetic Sir Ian Gilmour's words:
'As a moderate who disagreed with the economic policies of Prime Minister Thatcher, Gilmour became the most outspoken "wet", delivering a lecture at Cambridge in February 1980 where he argued:
"In the Conservative view, economic liberalism à la Professor Hayek, because of its starkness and its failure to create a sense of community, is not a safeguard of political freedom but a threat to it."
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