t well give its
citizens fairly good government, as did the Orleans Monarchy; but just
in so far as the mass of the people had any will of its own, it could
not arouse vital popular interest and support; and it could not
contribute, except negatively, to the fund of popular good sense and
experience. The lack of such popular support caused the death of the
French liberal monarchy; and no such regime can endure, save, as in
England, by virtue of a somewhat abject popular acquiescence. As long as
it does endure, moreover, it tends to undermine the virtue of its own
beneficiaries. The favored minority, feeling as they do tolerably sure
of their position, can scarcely avoid a habit of making it somewhat too
easy for one another. The political, economic, and intellectual leaders
begin to be selected without any sufficient test of their efficiency.
Some sort of a test continues to be required; but the standards which
determine it drift into a condition of being narrow, artificial, and
lax. Political, intellectual, and social leadership, in order to
preserve its vitality needs a feeling of effective responsibility to a
body of public opinion as wide, as varied, and as exacting as that of
the whole community.

The desirable democratic object, implied in the traditional democratic
demand for equality, consists precisely in that of bestowing a share of
the responsibility and the benefits, derived from political and economic
association, upon the whole community. Democracies have assumed and have
been right in assuming that a proper diffusion of effective
responsibility and substantial benefits is the one means whereby a
community can be supplied with an ultimate and sufficient bond of union.
The American democracy has attempted to manufacture a sufficient bond
out of the equalization of rights: but such a bond is, as we have seen,
either a rope of sand or a link of chains. A similar object must be
achieved in some other way; and the ultimate success of democracy
depends upon its achievement.

The fundamental political and social problem of a democracy may be
summarized in the following terms. A democracy, like every political and
social group, is composed of individuals, and must be organized for the
benefit of its constituent members. But the individual has no chance of
effective personal power except by means of the secure exercise of
certain personal rights. Such rights, then, must be secured and
exercised; yet when they are