o a democracy than to any other form of government, and
no doubt these reasons, if only unconsciously, were at the bottom of the
extraordinary body of repressive legislation put upon the books during
the late war. The essential thing about a democracy is that the men at
the head of the state are wholly dependent, for a continuance of their
power, upon the good opinion of the popular majority. While they are
actually in office, true enough, they are theoretically almost
completely irresponsible, but their terms of office are usually so short
that they must give constant thought to the imminent canvassing of their
acts, and this threat of being judged and turned out commonly greatly
conditions their exercise of their power, even while they hold it to the
full. Of late, indeed, there has actually arisen the doctrine that they
are responsible at all times and must respond to every shift in public
sentiment, regardless of their own inclinations, and there has even
grown up the custom of subjecting them to formal discipline, as by what
is called the recall. The net result is that a public officer under a
democracy is bound to regard the popular will during the whole of his
term in office, and cannot hope to carry out any intelligible plan of
his own if the mob has been set against it.

Now, the trouble with this scheme is that the mob reaches its
conclusions, not by logical steps but by emotional steps, and that its
information upon all save a very small minority of the questions
publicly at issue is always scant and inaccurate. It is thus constantly
liable to inflammation by adroit demagogues, or rabble-rousers, and
inasmuch as these rabble-rousers are animated as a sole motive by the
hope of turning out the existing officers of state and getting the
offices for themselves, the man in office must inevitably regard them as
his enemies and the doctrines they preach as subversive of good
government. This view is not altogether selfish. There is, in fact,
sound logic in it, for it is a peculiarity of the mob mind that it
always takes in most hospitably what is intrinsically most idiotic--that
between two antagonistic leaders it always follows the one who is
longest on vague and brilliant words and shortest on sense. Thus the man
in office, if he would be free to carry on his duties in anything
approaching freedom and comfort, must adopt measures against that
tendency to run amuck.

Three devices at once present themselves. One