Lecture Let us first examine the exceptional case of constitutional law, using that term in its very widest III. sense. From the progress of democracy-which, be it remembered, we are here considering simply as a change in the form of government-we may with some security infer that, while this change is going on, no alteration in a constitution will take place which obviously, and upon the face of it, diminishes the authority of the people. It is necessary, however, when trying to apply this conclusion, to recollect that the mass of mankind often fail to perceive or appreciate the effect of gradual and apparently petty changes. Hence, even in democratic countries, habits or institutions may come into existence which in reality curtail the power of the people, though not apparently threatening that power.' It is probably true, for instance, that the elaborate party system of the United States does actually, though not in form, bestow on party managers and wirepullers a large amount of power, which is subtracted from the just authority of the mass of the citizens. But this party system exists just because the majority of the people do not perceive its anti-democratic tendency. Still, though we should keep in mind the possibility that the members 1 The Chandos clause, introduced into the Reform Act by the Tory Opposition, but supported by some Radicals, gave a vote in the counties to tenants at will, mainly tenant farmers, paying a yearly rent of £50. This clause increased the number of voters, and seemed, therefore, democratic; but as such tenant farmers were dependent on their landlords, it really increased the power of the land-owners, and robbed the counties of their independence. It was supported, however, by democrats, who did not perceive the real tendency of the so-called amendment. III. of a democracy may fail to perceive the true character Lecture of laws or institutions which limit the authority of the people, it may fairly be assumed that where opinion has become democratic, or is becoming democratic, and where the mass of the people have obtained, or are obtaining sovereign power, each change in the constitution will probably increase the authority of numbers. Let us now see how far the advance of democracy is likely to affect laws which have not a constitutional character, or, in other words, which do not tell upon the distribution of sovereign power. In respect of the influence of democracy on such laws, we can draw with some confidence one probable conclusion. We may with high probability assume that no law will be carried, or at any rate that no law will long remain in force, which is opposed to the wish of the people, or, in other words, to the sentiment prevailing among the distinct majority of the citizens of a given country. It is, however, absolutely impossible from the advance of democracy to draw, with regard to laws which do not touch the balance of political power, anything more than this merely negative inference. The impossibility arises from the patent fact that, though in a democratic country the laws which will be passed, or at anyrate will be put into effect, must be the laws which the people like, it is absolutely impossible to predict on any a priori ground what are the laws which the people of a country will at any given time wish to be passed or put in force. The reason why the truth of a conclusion which is hardly disputable is not universally admitted, is to III. Lecture be found in a singular illusion which affects alike the friends and the opponents of democratic change. Democracy is a comparatively new form of government. Reformers, or revolutionists, who have attempted to achieve definite changes, e.g. the disestablishment of the Church, the abolition of primogeniture, the creation of peasant proprietorship, or, it may be, the regulation of public labour by the State for the advantage of artisans and labourers, stand in a position like that of men who look for immense blessing to the country from the accession to the throne of a new monarch; they tacitly or openly assume that the new sovereign -in this case the democracy-will carry out the ideas of beneficent legislation and good government entertained by the reformers who have placed the sovereign in power. The Whigs of 1830 supposed that a reformed Parliament would carry out the ideas which the Whigs had advocated in the Edinburgh Review. Radicals, such as the two Mills, Joseph Hume, or Francis Place, held that reform meant the triumph of unadulterated Benthamism. The Free Traders of 1846, even with the experience of France and America before their eyes, identified the progress of democracy with the acceptance of free trade. Many are the Englishmen who, in our own day, have found it impossible to believe that the old watchwords of peace, retrenchment, and reform might have as little attraction for a sovereign people as for a despotic monarch; and there are men still living who can recall the confidence with which ardent reformers anticipated that the predominance of British householders would ensure the adoption of exactly the policy which the reformers themselves deemed beneficial. Nor have the opponents of democ III. ratic innovation been free from a delusion strictly Lecture analogous to the error which has falsified the forecasts of democrats. Tories or Conservatives, who looked with terror and aversion on democratic progress, have for the most part assumed that the sovereign people would of necessity support legislation which is hateful to every man of conservative instincts. During the debates on the great Reform Bill the attacks made upon it by Tory zealots teemed with anticipations of iniquitous legislation. Men who hated revolution could not believe that democrats might be conservatives. At the bottom, in short, of all speculations about the effects of the advance of democracy, constantly lies the assumption that there exists such a thing as specially democratic legislation which every democracy is certain to favour. Yet there never was an assumption more clearly at variance with the teaching of history. Democracy in modern England has shown a singular tolerance, not to say admiration, for the kind of social inequalities involved in the existence of the Crown and of an hereditary and titled peerage; a cynic might even suggest that the easy working of modern English constitutionalism proves how beneficial may be in practice the result of democracy tempered by snobbishness. The people of England have certainly shown no hostility to the existence either of large fortunes or of large estates, and during the nineteenth century have betrayed no ardent desire for that creation of a large body of peasant proprietors, or yeomen, which enlightened Liberals have thought would confer untold benefits on the country. truth, the equal division of a man's property among In III. Lecture his descendants or his nearest relatives at his death, though almost essential to the maintenance of small estates, is thoroughly opposed to that absolute freedom of testamentary disposition to which Englishmen have so long been accustomed that they have come to look upon it as a kind of natural right. The English ecclesiastical establishment, opposed as it is to many democratic ideas or principles, has not been the object of much popular attack. The Established Church is more influential and more popular in 1904, than it was in 1830, and the influence of Nonconformists is, under the democratic constitution of to-day, apparently less considerable than was the influence some sixty or seventy years ago of what was then called the Dissenting interest. English democracy, in short, whilst caring somewhat for religious freedom, exhibits indifference to religious equality. From another point of view the position of the English democracy is peculiar. Almost alone among popular governments of the world, it has hitherto supported complete freedom of trade, and has on the whole, though on this matter one must speak with less certainty, favoured everything that promotes freedom of contract. Now the point to be specially noted is that the attitude of the English people (and this holds true of the attitude and legislative action of the people of every great country) is determined much less by the mere advance of democracy than by historical, and, even what one may fairly term, accidental circumstances. Democracy in England has to a great extent inherited the traditions of the aristocratic government, of which it is the heir. The relation of the judiciary to the executive, to the |