only answer that it is something that can sin and that can
sacrifice itself. A people can commit theft; a people can confess theft;
a people can repent of theft. That is the idea of the republic. Now,
most modern people have got into their heads the idea that democracies
are dull, drifting things, a mere black swarm or slide of clerks to
their accustomed doom. In most modern novels and essays it is insisted
(by way of contrast) that a walking gentleman may have ad-ventures as he
walks. It is insisted that an aristocrat can commit crimes, because an
aristocrat always cultivates liberty. But, in truth, a people can have
adventures, as Israel did crawling through the desert to the promised
land. A people can do heroic deeds; a people can commit crimes; the
French people did both in the Revolution; the Irish people have done
both in their much purer and more honourable progress.

But the real answer to this aristocratic argument which seeks to
identify democracy with a drab utilitarianism may be found in action
such as that of the Hungarian Commune--whose name I decline to repeat.
This Commune did just one of those acts that prove that a separate
people has a separate personality; it threw something away. A man can
throw a bank note into the fire. A man can fling a sack of corn into the
river. The bank-note may be burnt as a satisfaction of some scruple; the
corn may be destroyed as a sacrifice to some god. But whenever there is
sacrifice we know there is a single will. Men may be disputatious and
doubtful, may divide by very narrow majorities in their debate about
how to gain wealth. But men have to be uncommonly unanimous in order to
refuse wealth. It wants a very complete committee to burn a bank note in
the office grate. It needs a highly religious tribe really to throw
corn into the river. This self-denial is the test and definition of
self-government.

I wish I could feel certain that any English County Council or Parish
Council would be single enough to make that strong gesture of a romantic
refusal; could say, "No rents shall be raised from this spot; no grain
shall grow in this spot; no good shall come of this spot; it shall
remain sterile for a sign." But I am afraid they might answer, like the
eminent sociologist in the story, that it was "wiste of spice."

The Strangeness of Luxury

It is an English misfortune that what is called "public spirit" is so
often a very private spirit; the legitimate but stri