34 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 



government, which constitutes the chief differ- 

 ence between ancient and modern politics, 

 which has made it possible for democracy to 

 exist without slavery, and which has made it 

 possible for large states to possess free institu- 

 tions, came about mainly because Englishmen 

 felt it inconvenient to attend personally when 

 the King wished to obtain money : an irksome 

 duty was readily transferred to others. 1 But 

 representative government, as maintained by 

 civil war in the seventeenth century, and repre- 

 sentative crovernment as imitated in all the 

 most advanced nations of the world, is some- 

 thing consciously and deliberately chosen. It 

 is a further and more complex application of 

 the convenient principle of " counting heads to 

 save the trouble of breaking them." Federa- 

 tion, in its modern sense, 2 is a still further and 

 still more complex application of the same 

 principle, though Strauss, with the prejudices 

 of a German monarchist, thinks a federal state 



1 See Hearn, Government of England, 2nd Edit. pp. 466 ff. 



2 I add this qualification, because the Federations of 

 ancient history appear not to have recognised, except in 

 rudimentary form, the principle of representation, and thus 

 belonged to a lower, not a higher, type of society than the 

 city-state. 



