modem times and took over the powera and prerogatives of tbebeadof the manor or the feudal lord, it took over also the incidence o( thia aenae of allegiance, and the sense of solidarity came to cover the larger group of the nation which had succeeded U> the autonomy of the manor. Where tbe line of Institutional descent runs through the industrial town, with guild, handicraft, and local government, the transient features of the growth are Buperficlally dlBerent but in eflecl much the same. Tbe discipline of warfare, which kept up the practice of joint action and had the appearance ot joint enterprise, served to keep the sense of patriotic solidarity Qnn and vigorous and enabled it to cover other interests as well as the princely enKrprise of warfare and state-making. Wherever unbroken peace prevailed for an appreciable period, so as to affect tbe growth of traditions, the sense of national solidarity showed symptoms of slackening. For purposes of economic solidarity tbe commonwealth la conceived after the manner of an overgrown manor. It figures as such, e.g., In English mercantilist writlDga ot the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, as well aa in the patriotic trade politics of the present,
■ In passing it may be remarked that the fact of tbis sense of sotldarity being an anachronism must not be taken as implying anything for or igaiiin the subMantial meritB of such a frame of mind.
290 THE THEORY OF BUSISESS ENTERPBI^
The second institutional support of business politica, viz. property, la similarly an outgrowth of the discipline of the past, and similarly, though perhaps in a less degree, put of touch with tlie_^8cipline of the more recent cultural situation. In the form in which it prevails in the current popular animus, the principle of ownership comes down from the days of handicraft industry and petty trade, as pointed out above. As it is of less ancient and less unbroken descent, so it seems also to be a less secure cultural heritage than the sense of patriotic solidarity. It says that the