p, it is intellectual incompetence, nay moral
incompetence which is sought instinctively in the people's choice.

* * * * *

If possible, it is more than this. The people favours incompetence, not
only because it is no judge of intellectual competence and because it
looks on moral competence from a wrong point of view, but because it
desires before everything, as indeed is very natural, that its
representatives should resemble itself. This it does for two reasons.

First, as a matter of sentiment, the people desires, as we have seen,
that its representatives should share its feelings and prejudices. These
representatives can share its prejudices and yet not absolutely resemble
it in morals, habits, manners and appearance; but naturally the people
never feels so certain that a man shares its prejudices and is not
merely pretending to do so, as when the man resembles it feature by
feature. It is a sign and a guarantee. The people is instinctively
impelled therefore to elect men of the same habits, manners and even
education as itself, or shall we say of an education slightly superior,
the education of a man who can talk, but only superior in a very slight
degree.

In addition to this sentimental reason, there is another, which is
extremely important, for it goes to the very root of the democratic
idea. What is the people's one desire, when once it has been stung by
the democratic tarantula? It is that all men should be equal, and in
consequence that all inequalities natural as well as artificial should
disappear. It will not have artificial inequalities, nobility of birth,
royal favours, inherited wealth, and so it is ready to abolish nobility,
royalty, and inheritance. Nor does it like natural inequalities, that is
to say a man more intelligent, more active, more courageous, more
skilful than his neighbours. It cannot destroy these inequalities, for
they are natural, but it can neutralise them, strike them with impotence
by excluding them from the employments under its control. Democracy is
thus led quite naturally, irresistibly one may say, to exclude the
competent precisely because they are competent, or if the phrase
pleases better and as the popular advocate would put it, not because
they are competent but because they are unequal, or, as he would
probably go on to say, if he wished to excuse such action, not because
they are unequal, but because being unequal they are suspect