statistics. Even John Stuart Mill, radical and optimist though he was, caught up the note of alarm from De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and sounded a warning blast against the menace of that multiplied tyranny of the multitude which made him the champion of enlightened minorities. With facts like these in view, it is permissible to think that, if Burke's theory of government is to be laid on the shelf, it ought to be in deference to other arguments than the dubious 'logic of accomplished facts.' It has still a claim to be examined on its merits. And as it involves two salient points, the affirmation of the political incapacity of the multitude and the plea for a natural aristocracy,' we may, as matter of arrangement, take these in turn.

(b) The Political Incapacity of the Multitude It is possible that, upon this fundamental point, Burke's convictions may have a historical justification. Let historians decide. It is for them to say, from an exact and intimate knowledge of the English people in the latter half of the eighteenth century, if Burke was wrong, and if Pitt, not to say Shelburne and Richmond (who went much further) were right in advocating large measures of enfranchisement. Our concern is with Burke's arguments only in so far as they have been generalised, as they have often been, into a case against the democratic movement of the nineteenth century and the demo

cratic reforms which have followed in its train. Are the friends of democracy in a position to say that these arguments have been refuted? Can they specify where their weakness lies? This is the challenge which must be met.

6

The challenge is, however, one which democracy need not fear to face. For there is one aspect at any rate in which Burke has made the case for his uncompromising exclusions difficult by nothing so much as by his own admissions. For his vein is not the vein of Coriolanus. The rabble, the mob, the common herd, the louts, the clowns, the rotten multitudinous canaille, and suchlike are not expletives characteristic of him. However bitter and envenomed the words he flung at the sanguinary proletariat of Paris-did he not call them a swinish multitude' ? 1—it was far enough from his large and sympathetic mind to think thus meanly and savagely of the great mass of his humble fellowcountrymen, for whose claims and virtues he had, as we have seen,2 a sincerity of respect which many a radical might imitate. 'He censures God who quarrels with the imperfections of men.' Such was his avowed conviction; and it is entirely in keeping with it that' to love and respect his kind' is one of the marks of the statesman after his own heart. But it is just this attitude of respect that goes far

1 It was explained as evoked by the inhuman execution of Bailly, the historian of astronomy.

& P. 170.

to undermine his Whig exclusiveness. It gives the democratic critic an opening. For however wide the step from respecting a human being to the wish to give him a share in political power; and however easy it be to point to men, even the best and the greatest, like Scott or Carlyle, who have exalted the peasant saint and abhorred the democratic voter, it is none the less the fact that there is no idea, not even liberty or fraternity, more fundamentally fatal to all political monopolies and exclusions than the idea and sentiment of respect for men. Nor is it difficult to see why. For when one man genuinely respects another, it is never merely because of what that other may have actually succeeded in making of himself and his opportunities; it is, always in part and sometimes mainly, because he believes that the person he respects has capacities and powers which, given more favouring conditions, would find fuller realisation. If it be just and right to estimate mankind by what they are, we can never value them at their real worth, if we do not include in what they are, the something more, be it much or little, which they have it in them to become. This comes to light quite clearly, it is in fact a commonplace, in all those cases where human faculty and promise are manifestly obstructed by disease, penury, or ill-fortune. Nor do we go one whit beyond the facts in venturing the assertion that the very nerve of social effort would be cut,

were it to happen that the more helpful and vigorous members of a community were convincedcould such a disaster befall them—that the mass of their fellow-citizens were inherently incapable of rising towards the opportunities of a happier lot and a larger life. To believe men to be worth helping implies some faith that they will respond to what is done for them. And if this is true even of the social stratum, where latent powers and capacities are at a minimum, it holds with incomparably greater force where these are normal, and by consequence more capable of response to larger opportunities.

Doubtless these larger opportunities need not include politics. Fortunately for all of us, there are many other things to live for. It is equally true that Burke and Scott and Carlyle were right in holding that men might have much worth without votes, and that demagogues are extravagant when they speak as if enfranchisement is the one specific for lifting mankind out of a pit of degradation. But this is not conclusive. For the point in issue is not whether ordinary men may not have much in their lives to be thankful for, even though they have never seen the inside of a polling-booth or a political meeting, but whether, be their private and personal worth what it may, they do not possess likewise sufficient political faculty and promise to justify, for their own sake and their country's,

their admission to citizenship. And once the question is raised in this form, the presumption lies not in favour of permanent exclusions but in the contrary direction. For the object of respect as between man and man is not mere qualities, not even shining qualities: it is character. It is, in other words, the principle of moral and social life which, however grievously it may be stunted and obstructed, is nevertheless discernible in every normal human soul; and this central principle of life and worth is so far from being circumscribed within fixed and unyielding limits that, as a matter of common experience, it is often eagerly responsive to new openings and opportunities. It was a doctrine of some of the Greek philosophers that, if a man have one virtue he has all the virtues. So stated it is, as it was meant to be, a paradox; but it is a paradox that embodies the truth, none more fundamental in ethics, that he who has virtue in those relationships in which he has been put to the proof has within him a principle of virtue which, if opportunity be given, will not fail to assert itself in other directions. In other and more concrete words, if an artisan or a peasant have principle enough to be a good father, a true friend, a helpful neighbour, a capable workman, a law-abiding subject, the presumption is in favour of his becoming likewise a reasonably good citizen, if opportunity to prove his quality be given him. To pay to