s, one regrets to say,
fallen out of use. But we are compensated for this in some measure by
the invention of new terms of insult almost every day. It is not very
long since Mr Lloyd George called Mr Steel Maitland "the
cat's-meat-man of the Tory party," and Mr Steel Maitland retorted by
calling Mr Lloyd George "Gehazi, the leper." And, side by side with
original fancies of this kind, the old-fashioned dictionary of abuse
still stands as open as the English Bible, where statesmen may arm
themselves with nouns and adjectives that everybody can understand,
such as "duke," "turncoat," "Jack Cade," "paid agitator," "Irish,"
"attorney," "despot," "nefarious" (which was almost as dead as
"serpent" till Sir Edward Carson revived it), and, last but not least,
"demagogue." It is only a day or two since Mr Bonar Law called Mr
Lloyd George a demagogue, and one was disappointed to find that Mr
Lloyd George, instead of calling Mr Bonar Law Nebuchadnezzar or Judas
Iscariot in return, merely insisted that he could not be a demagogue,
because a demagogue was a man who kicked away the ladder by which he
had risen. This is very much as if you were to call a man "Bill
Sikes," and he retorted that he could not be Bill Sikes because Bill
Sikes had a wooden leg. Of course, Bill Sikes had not a wooden leg,
and a demagogue is not necessarily a man who kicks away the ladder by
which he has risen. A demagogue is simply a mob-leader--a man who
appeals to popular passions rather than principles. He is what half
the statesmen of all parties aspire to be in every democratic
community. Despots obtain their mastery over the crowd by the sword:
demagogues by the catchword. That is the difference between a tyranny
and a democracy. It may not seem to be a change for the better to
those who have a taste for the costumes and lights of the theatre. But
the demagogue at least consults the mob as though it had a mind and
will of its own. The very way in which he flatters it and instigates
it to passion is an assertion of its freedom of choice, and,
therefore, a concession to the dignity of human nature. It is like
wooing as compared with marriage by capture.

Even when we have put the demagogue securely above the despot,
however, we are left in considerable doubt about him. Somehow or other
we do not like him. We do not trust him further than we can see him.
We distrust him as Aristophanes, Shakespeare, and Dickens did. We feel
that the difference between a