They
incline to an oligarchy such as is here in England where a small group of
families, intermarried one with the other, dining together perpetually
and perpetually guests in each other's houses, are by a tacit agreement
with the populace permitted to direct a nation. Or they incline to the
old-fashioned and very stable device of a despotic bureaucracy such as
manages to keep Prussia upright, and did until recently support the
expansion of Russia.
The evils of such a compromise with a political idea are evident enough.
The oligarchy will be luxurious and corporately corrupt, and individually
somewhat despicable, with a sort of softness about it in morals and in
military affairs. The despot or the bureaucracy will be individually
corrupt, especially in the lower branches of the system, and hatefully
unfeeling.
"But," (says your thinker, especially as he advances in age) "man is so
made that he _cannot_ otherwise be collectively governed. He cannot
collectively be the master, or at any rate permanently the master of his
collective destiny, whatever power his reason and free will give him over
his individual fate. The nation" (says he), "especially the large nation,
certainly has a Will, but it cannot directly express that Will. And if it
attempts to do so, whatever machinery it chooses--even the referendum--will
but create a gross mechanical parody of that subtle organic thing, the
National soul.
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