182 



ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book II 

 Chapter 4 



or a machine 

 for executing 

 their ' ' man- 

 dates " ; 



and there are 

 signs which 

 might suggest 

 that the few in 

 politics are 

 really becom- 

 ing the mere 

 instruments of 

 the many. 



without it. They are to be sought not in the 

 conduct of elected legislators, but in the machinery 

 by which they are elected, and, above all, in those 

 unofficial movements, meetings, and agitations by 

 which the prophets of democracy affirm that the 

 great mass of the people is learning to exert the 

 power which was always latent in it, and to express 

 its will with regard to every question of govern- 

 ment as it arises, even if it has something yet to 

 learn in the art of securing that its governors shall 

 carry out its commands. It is this view of the 

 situation which is expressed in the popular saying 

 that a constituency has elected a member, or that 

 the people has elected a parliament, with what is 

 called a " mandate " to do some specified thing 

 or things to break up the United Kingdom, to 

 disestablish the English Church, to penalise the 

 drinking of a glass of beer on Sundays, or to 

 deprive our soldiers of protection against the most 

 malignant of contagious maladies. 



Now the democrats, it must be admitted, are so 

 far right, that a real political power has come into 

 existence which has no constitutional connection 

 with the men who nominally govern ; and this is 

 frequently used with such efficiency, and with such 

 definite purpose, that official governors men of 

 most exceptional intellect are compelled by it to 

 use their intellect for ends which they themselves 

 condemn. Here, then, in this external power, is to 

 be found, if it is to be found anywhere, the will of 

 the many, as conceived of by the theorists of demo- 



