stituting for democracy a government of a very
different type.

Democracy is, in fact, a disintegrating force. It is strong in
destruction, and tends to fall to pieces when the work of demolition
(which may of course be a necessary task) is over. Democracy dissolves
communities into individuals and collects them again into mobs. It pulls
up by the roots the social order which civilisation has gradually
evolved, and leaves men _deracines_, as Bourget says in one of his best
novels, homeless and friendless, with no place ready for them to fill.
It is the opposite extreme to the caste system of India, which, with all
its faults, does not seem to breed the European type of _enrage_, the
enemy of society as such.

6. The corruption of democracies proceeds directly from the fact that
one class imposes the taxes and another class pays them. The
constitutional principle, 'No taxation without representation,' is
utterly set at nought under a system which leaves certain classes
without any effective representation at all. At the present time it is
said that one-tenth of the population pays five-sixths of the taxes. The
class which imposes the taxes has refused to touch the burden of the war
with one of its fingers; and every month new doles at the public expense
are distributed under the camouflage of 'social reform.' At every
election the worldly goods of the minority are put up to auction. This
is far more immoral than the old-fashioned election bribery, which was a
comparatively honest deal between two persons; and in its effects it is
far more ruinous. Democracy is likely to perish, like the monarchy of
Louis XVI, through national bankruptcy.

Besides these defects, the democracy has ethical standards of its own,
which differ widely from those of the educated classes. Among the poor,
'generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before
chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one.
In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of
any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation.[3] In this
country, at any rate, democracy means a victory of sentiment over
reason. Some may prefer the softer type of character, and may hope that
it will make civilisation more humane and compassionate than it has been
in the past. Unfortunately, experience shows that none is so cruel as
the disillusioned sentimentalist. He thinks that he can break or ignore
nature's laws