It is false because it does not really mean
the rule of the Demos, or People. "The poorest
and most numerous class" is not the People. It is
not even the most considerable element of the Peo-

ple. There are other elements far more important
in a nation than poverty and numbers

It is false, again, because it rests upon the manifest
sophism of the equivalence of all men in the body
politic, a sophism contradicted both by physical
and political science

Equal voting is in principle wrong." It is wrong because it is contrary to the nature of things, which is ethical; because it is unjust

It is unjust to the classes, for it infringes their right as persons to count in the community for what they are really worth; it is tyrannously repressive of the better sort

It is unjust to the masses, for it infringes their right to the guidance of men of light and leading, and subjects them to a base oligarchy of vile political adventurers

It is unjust to the State, which it derationalises, making it "not the passionless expression of general right, but the engine of individual caprice, under alternate fits of appetite and fear."

Before passing on to survey the actual working in the world of this False Democracy, and the corruption of the State in which it issues, three apologies put forward for it must be briefly considered. They may be termed respectively, the Abstract or a priori, the Utilitarian, and the Sentimental

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The a priori defence of False Democracy is formulated by Rousseau in his doctrine of the Social Contract 183 This contract is wholly fictitious. To expose Rousseau's political sophisms is to kill the dead over again. And yet those sophisms constitute the stock in trade of Continental Radicalism. The Utilitarian apology for False Democracy is, in effect, that all people seek what it is to their interest to have that it is to the interest of the majority to have good government: and that therefore the majority should bear rule

But the Utilitarian apology for False Democracy, if
tested by facts, is as untenable as the a priori. The
conception of man as an animal dominated by self-
interest is quite unreal. Man is habitually swayed
by a number of impulses, emotions, passions, hallu-
cinations, altogether unaffected by Utilitarian cal-
culations. Again, to desire one's own advantage is
one thing; to know how to attain it is quite an-
other. Further, it does not in the least follow that
what is for a man's private advantage is for the
general benefit. And, with universal or quasi-uni-
versal suffrage, the number of voters who are
capable of even grasping the idea of the general
benefit, must of necessity be infinitesimal.
The Sentimental apology for False Democracy rests
upon the belief-or profession-that the instinct of
the masses never, or hardly ever, goes astray; that
it is really a form—an unconscious form-of right
reason, and the most trustworthy

But the annals of the world do not show that the un-
reasoning instinct of the masses has been invariably,
or even frequently, right; they show that it is

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186

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189

usually wrong. The Sentimental apology for False
Democracy is as untenable as is the a priori apology,
or the Utilitarian apology

And if we survey the working of False Democracy in the world around us, we find that it issues in the utter corruption of the State. This is so in its birthplace, France.

And here France may stand for the type of the Latin
races generally
In Germany it has been kept under by the Hohenzoll-
erns and the wisest thinkers there own that its
establishment would be fatal to their country

In the United States of America, where False Demoracy has had free course, and is glorified, it has resulted in the exclusion of the first minds of the country from public life, as something too mean and sordid for an honest, self-respecting man to meddle with: "the Government is below the mental and moral level even of the masses

In England, the Reform Act of 1832 made a new departure in political life: it rased out "the sacred principle of a representation of interests," and introduced "the mad and barbarising scheme of a delegation of individuals "

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213

The Reform Act of 1832 was the beginning of a series of similar statutes, underlain by the Rousseauan or Jacobin principle of the political equivalence of men and the absolute right of numerical majorities; and each carrying that principle further. It was the introduction into the country of political atomism, of a representation of mere numbers . 215 The net result of them, and of the accompanying changes

in local government is, that if the English system, as

it exists at this moment, were really representative,
all power would be in the hands of the manual
labourers, skilled and unskilled

Both the great political parties are committed, implicitly, to the principle of False Democracy: and the only means by which either can obtain or retain office is by doing homage to it.

What is, practically, universal inorganic suffrage now prevails in England as in France

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The question then arises, Why has it not, as yet, produced in England so much mischief as in France?. 217 No doubt national history is rooted in national character. And national character has its own laws. The British temperament is alien from the French. Moreover, in 1789, France, in a single night of verbose intoxication, broke with all her old historical traditions. In England old historical traditions are a great power. The character of the people is rational and conservative

But characters are modified, nay, are largely transformed, by the influences brought to bear upon them; and that in nations, as in individuals of whom nations are composed. The wide diffusion among us of purely arithmetical or mechanical conceptions in politics, and the consequent belief in the absolute right of majorities, constitute a grave danger; for such conceptions necessarily tend to realise themselves in fact

Add to this that responsible politicians, in their eager

ness to pander to and to trade upon popular pas-
sions, have used every rhetorical artifice to split up
our national solidarity and to array the masses
against the classes. They teach, almost in terms,

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219

Rousseau's doctrine that civilisation is depravation; that the instincts of the ignorant and untutored child of nature-the rough, in fact-are the best qualification for the exercise of political power But certain it is that when the masses, in any country, realising their possession of preponderating political power, use it for the purpose of swamping the better educated and better off minority, the decadence of that country has begun

The quintessence of that vast chaotic movement which we have called False Democracy is not political, in the ordinary and corrupt sense of the word, but social. Its end is not a mere rearrangement of the mechanism of the State for the benefit of wirepullers and bosses

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What advantageth it to the mechanic, groaning under the forced toil of over-competition, to the agricultural labourer, a mere animated tool, that he possesses an infinitesimal share in the election of one of the rulers of his country, unless his material condition is improved thereby? Equality of right is a barren notion unless it be wedded with fact . 220 This is a truth to which Lazarus will no doubt request the attention of Dives. And Lazarus is now master of the situation, as Dives fully recognises when soliciting his vote in Parliamentary elections Nor will it, probably, avail much to exhort the ruling majority of poor "that it is not for their advantage to weaken the security of property, and that it would be weakened by any act of arbitrary spoliation"

As a matter of history, no fear of weakening the security of property has ever withheld the classes which

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