He only sensed that London, and England at large, was very divided about what it was and what it wanted to be. And he understood that silver lay behind it all. For when the Radicals wrote about the perils of industrialization, and when the Conservatives refuted this with proof of the booming economy; when any of the political parties spoke about slums, housing, roads, transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing; when anyone spoke about Britain and the Empire’s future at all, the word was always there in papers, pamphlets, magazines, and even prayer books: silver, silver, silver.
