of his powers, has to
start by dissembling his moderation, and by making a noisy display of
factious violence. If he wants to be nominated to a post where it will
be his business to defend and guarantee public security, he has to begin
by advocating civil war: to become a peacemaker he must first pose as a
rebel.

Every popular favourite passes through these two phases, and has to
complete one stage before he starts on the next. Is it not better, you
will ask, that a man's whole career should be spent in defence of law
and order rather than the latter part of it? Not at all, because you
cannot exercise any influence as a friend of law and order unless you
have begun as an anarchist.

These changes of opinion occur so frequently that they merely raise a
smile. They have, however, this drawback, that the friend of law and
order, with a seditious past, never has an undisputed authority, and he
spends half his time explaining the reasons for his defection, and this
is a sore let and hindrance to his subsequent career.

The people always elects men swayed by real or simulated passion. These
will either always remain in a state of frenzied excitement, and they
are the great majority, or they will become moderate men, largely
disqualified and handicapped, as we have above shown, for their new
career. The vast majority of these sentimentalists rush into politics
instead of studying them with deliberation, judgment and wisdom. The
canons of good government as above set out are entirely subverted. The
law does not control and restrain the passions of the populace.
Legislation becomes little more than an expression of their frenzy, a
series of party measures levelled by one faction against the other. The
introduction of a bill is a challenge; the passing of an act is a
victory; definitions which at once damn the legislator, and convict the
system.

[A] Characters in Montesquieu's _Lettres Persanes_. Letter
cxxix.

CHAPTER V.

LAWS UNDER DEMOCRACY.

The truth of my contention is proved by the fact that nowadays all our
laws are emergency laws, a thing that no law should ever be. Montesquieu
advised people to be very chary and to think twice before they destroyed
old laws or pulled down an old house to run up a tent, but his advice is
completely ignored. New laws are made for every change in the weather,
for every little daily incident in politics. We are getting used to this
hand-to-mouth legislation. Like the b