marches ahead of the majority. Even more than the most absolute oriental despotism, it becomes a government of men, not of laws. Its favourites are, to all intents and purposes, immune to criminal processes, whatever their offences, and its enemies are exposed to espionage and persecution of the most aggravated sort. It takes advantage of every passing craze and delusion of the mob to dispose of those who oppose it, and it maintains a complex and highly effective machine for launching such crazes and delusions when the supply of them lags. Above all, it always shows that characteristically Puritan habit of which Brooks Adams wrote in “The Emancipation of Massachusetts”: the habit, to wit, of inflicting as much mental suffering as possible upon its victims. That is to say, it not only has at them by legal means; it also defames them, and so seeks to ruin them doubly. The constant and central aim of every democratic government is to silence criticism of itself. It begins to weaken, i. e., the jobs of its component rogues begin to be insecure, the instant such criticism rises. It is thus fidei defensor before it is anything else, and its whole power, legal and extra-legal, is thrown against the sceptic
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