ed of being
opponents of equality. So it all comes to the same thing. This it is
that made Aristotle say that where merit is despised, there is
democracy. He does not say so in so many words, but he wrote: "Where
merit is not esteemed before everything else, it is not possible to have
a firmly established aristocracy," and that amounts to saying that where
merit is not esteemed, we enter at once on a democratic regime and never
escape from it.

The chance, then, of efficiency coming to the front in this state of
affairs is indeed deplorable.

First and last, democracy--and it is natural enough--_wishes to do
everything itself_, it is the enemy of all specialisation of functions,
particularly it wishes to govern, without delegates or intermediaries.
Its ideal is direct government as it existed at Athens, its ideal is
"democracy," in the terminology of Rousseau, who applied the word to
direct government and to direct government only.

Forced by historical events and perhaps by necessity to govern by
delegates, how could democracy still contrive to govern directly or
nearly so, although continuing to govern through delegates?

Its first alternative is, perhaps, to impose on its delegates an
imperative mandate. Delegates under this condition become mere agents of
the people. They attend the legislative assembly to register the will of
the people just as they receive it, and the people in reality governs
directly. This is what is meant by the imperative mandate.

Democracy has often considered it, but never with persistence. Herein it
shows good sense. It has a shrewd suspicion that the imperative mandate
is never more than a snare and a delusion. Representatives of the people
meet and discuss, the interests of party become defined. Henceforward
they are the prey of the goddess Opportunity, the Greek {Kairos}.
Then it happens one day that to vote according to their mandate would be
very unfavourable to the interest of their party. They are therefore
obliged to be faithless to their party by reason of their fidelity to
their mandate, or disobedient to their mandate by reason of their
obedience to their party; and in any case to have betrayed their mandate
with this very praiseworthy and excellent intention is a thing for which
they can take credit or at least obtain excuse with the electors--and on
such a matter it will be very difficult to refute them.

The imperative mandate is therefore a very clumsy instrument for w