Again the novel points up the subjective, personal motives underlying supposedly unified action.

The sentence is a direct ironic comment on Charles Gould's idealistic speech about the virtue of material interests , in which he claimed that they would bring "law, good faith, order, security" to Costaguana. The riot does not exactly gainsay Gould's vision, because we know that the future holds the triumph of material interests and a successfully more stable society. Rather, the irony here suggests that when stability comes, it will not be due to widespread idealistic devotion to the cause of material interests. The same motley of personal motives that exist now will exist then; they will merely be suppressed.