THE CONSERVATIVE MAN
397
vast strata of rentiers among most sections of the business world,
the middle classes, and even a great part of the working class.
The country which was especially typical of Western Civiliza–
tion and represented its spirit best was the Netherlands; a peaceful
little country, with many prosperous business men and idle rentiers,
big and small capitalists who had accumulated savings, investors
who owned stocks and bonds with properties spread over the entire
world. In "garden towns," thousands of retired and active busi–
ness men as well as highly skilled workers were living in their own
pleasant homesteads. The Dutch burgher was in many respects a
world citizen. He stood for the principles of conservative liberal–
ism. He believed in the benefits of free trade and competition. He
was a democrat in·so far as he was opposed to feudal privileges and
autocratic rule by the government. Above all, he was a defender of
law and order, of any administration which protected private prop–
erty rights and respected a high standard of business morale.
This burgher regarded countries which failed to pay their debts
or to observe the laws of capitalist commerce as uncivilized and
backward. He owned stocks and bonds which produced an income
from enterprises all over the world-Malaya, South Africa, Amer–
ica, or Czarist Russia. He held foreign government bonds because
these paid a higher rate of interest than the domestic savings banks.
He did not care whether Czarist Russia was autocratic or demo–
cratic. His main concern was whether his claim for payment of
interest would he respected and whether the foreign government
could be trusted from the creditor's point of view.
With Western Civilization thus permeating the entire world,
the governments of Western countries were concerned more with
securing international respect for the creditor's property rights
than with spreading democracy, liberty, and freedom. It is a fact
that Western Europe's liberal governments more often supported
anti-liberal, autocratic governments in other countries than pro–
gressive, liberal, or democratic regimes. The latter were often
regarded as "dangerous" because they threatened to become too
independent and did not fully acknowledge the inferior position of
the debtor towards the creditor. They tended to shake off the eco–
nomic dependence from the established world powers.
As far back as the eighteenth century this phenomenon was
apparent. Bourgeois Britain did not help the bourgeois revolution
