whom democracy dreads because he means to
govern and does not intend to allow the mob to govern through him, is
the man who succeeds in getting elected for some constituency or other,
either by the influence of his wealth or by the prestige of his talent
and notoriety. Such a man is not dependent on democracy. If a
legislative assembly were entirely or by a majority composed of rich
men, men of superior intelligence, men who had an interest in attending
to the trades or professions in which they had succeeded rather than in
playing at politics, they would vote according to their own ideas, and
then--what would happen? Why then democracy would be simply suppressed.
It would no longer legislate and govern; there would be, to speak
exactly, an aristocracy, not very permanently established perhaps, but
still an aristocracy which would eliminate the influence of the people
from public affairs.

Clearly it is almost impossible for the democracy, if it means to
survive, to encourage efficiency, nay it is almost impossible for it to
refrain from attempting to destroy efficiency.

Thus, we may sum up, only those are elected as the representatives of
the people, who are its exact counterparts and constant dependents.

CHAPTER II.

CONFUSION OF FUNCTIONS.

And what is the result of all this? The result, which is very logical,
very just from the democratic point of view, and precisely that which
the democracy desires and cannot do otherwise than desire, is that the
national representatives do exactly what the people would wish them to
do, and what the people would do itself if it undertook to govern
directly itself. _The representative government wishes to do everything
itself_, just as the people would like to do, if it were itself
exercising the functions of government directly, just as it did in olden
times on the Pnyx at Athens.

Montesquieu realised this fully, though naturally he had no experience
of how the theory worked under a representative and parliamentary
system. The principle of it all is at bottom the same, and only the
change of a single phrase is needed to make the following quotation
strictly applicable. "The principle of democracy," he says, "is
perverted not only when it loses the spirit of equality, but still more
_when it carries the spirit of equality to an extreme, and when every
one wishes to be the equal of those whom he chooses to govern him_. For
then the people, not being able to tolerate