ered Barker. "You judge it rather as if England was still a poor
and pugnacious island; you have been long out of Europe. Many things
have happened."

"And what," asked the other, "would you call the summary of those
things?"

"The summary of those things," answered Barker, with great animation,
"is that we are rid of the superstitions, and in becoming so we have
not merely become rid of the superstitions which have been most
frequently and most enthusiastically so described. The superstition of
big nationalities is bad, but the superstition of small nationalities
is worse. The superstition of reverencing our own country is bad, but
the superstition of reverencing other people's countries is worse. It
is so everywhere, and in a hundred ways. The superstition of monarchy
is bad, and the superstition of aristocracy is bad, but the
superstition of democracy is the worst of all."

The old gentleman opened his eyes with some surprise.

"Are you, then," he said, "no longer a democracy in England?"

Barker laughed.

"The situation invites paradox," he said. "We are, in a sense, the
purest democracy. We have become a despotism. Have you not noticed how
continually in history democracy becomes despotism? People call it the
decay of democracy. It is simply its fulfilment. Why take the trouble
to number and register and enfranchise all the innumerable John
Robinsons, when you can take one John Robinson with the same intellect
or lack of intellect as all the rest, and have done with it? The old
idealistic republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all
men were equally intelligent. Believe me, the sane and enduring
democracy is founded on the fact that all men are equally idiotic. Why
should we not choose out of them one as much as another. All that we
want for Government is a man not criminal and insane, who can rapidly
look over some petitions and sign some proclamations. To think what
time was wasted in arguing about the House of Lords, Tories saying it
ought to be preserved because it was clever, and Radicals saying it
ought to be destroyed because it was stupid, and all the time no one
saw that it was right because it was stupid, because that chance mob
of ordinary men thrown there by accident of blood, were a great
democratic protest against the Lower House, against the eternal
insolence of the aristocracy of talents. We have established now in
England, the thing towards which all systems have dimly groped, th