THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY. 495 



irresponsible many. Wisdom and virtue do not increase with 

 the multiplication of the greed and ignorance intrusted with the 

 management of an important and difficult enterprise. Forty- 

 millions of despots under the hierarchy of other despots trying 

 to force thirty millions of subjects under the same debasing rule, 

 to live a life not their own and to contribute money to a use they 

 have no interest in, is just as much a form of feudalism as the 

 government of a Bourbon prince or of a council of Spartan 

 ephors.* It is just as certain to evoke the same evils and stir uj) 

 the same revolt that have overthrown every other despotism. 



Ignored as this truth has been and still is in speculation and 

 practice, it has been tacitly recognized and acted upon. That is 

 why the tyranny of the majority has been branded as no better 

 than the tyranny of the minority ; why publicists from Aristotle 

 to Mill and Spencer have declaimed against its perils; why so 

 much has been done in contravention of the belief that progress 

 is to be sought through an increase of these perils ; why scheme 

 after scheme for the selection of representatives, for the restriction 

 of legislatures, for the appointment of officials, and for the preven- 

 tion of extravagance and fraud, have been invented ; why every 

 one of them has failed, and must inevitably fail. The virtue of 

 human wit is not greater than the virtue of human character. A 

 system of regulation can not be devised that will not yield to some 

 plan to subvert it.f "If, in Greece," says Polybius, describing 

 an experience constantly duplicated in modern democracies, " the 

 state intrusts to any one only a talent, and if it has ten checking 

 clerks, and as many seals, and twice as many witnesses, it can not 

 insure his honesty." X But with character any political system 



* Here we have an explanation of Mill's statement (Liberty, Ticknor and Fields edition, pp. 

 135, 136) that " the spirit of improvement is not always the spirit of liberty, for it may aim at 

 forcing improvements on an unwilling people." He adds very truly that " the only unfailing 

 and permanent source of improvement is liberty, sinee by it there are as many possible inde- 

 pendent centers of improvement as there are individuals." 



f One example is the Raines law and its amendments, which led to the invention of the 

 Raines hotel and clubs to circumvent the legislator. Another example is the new German 

 bourse or anti-option law that the corn and produce merchants of Berlin have, according 

 to a cablegram in the Evening Post of May 13th, discovered ways to evade. 



X Quoted by May, Democracy in Europe, vol. i, p. 126. "The number of defalcations of 

 county treasurers," says Mr. Roberts, Comptroller of Ijfew York (Annual Report, 1897, p. li), 

 " brought to my attention induced me to inquire of every county clerk in the State as to 

 whether there had been any defaulting treasurer in his county of late years. The replies 

 received show defalcations or shortages in twenty-three counties. In some cases there was 

 one ; in some two ; and in one several." Referring to " internal improvements " and other 

 business enterprises in the United States, Prof. John W. Million says, in his State Aid to 

 Railroads in Missouri, p. 30 : " There is not a single case in the whole list of the States 

 attempting the construction or the assistance in the construction of public works between 

 1825 and 1840 in which there is evidence of commanding administrative ability. In the 

 case of almost all there is an absence of what can be called immaculate honesty." In his 



