numberless Germanic sovereigns were cut down to about 350, and again, by the date of the Treaty of Vienna, to a mere handful of 40, whence the Prussian autocracy reduced them to their position to-day. So far, then, from democracy being coincident with the rule of force, it may be not impossible that it will prove favourable to the rule of right and equity. Indeed, at the Hague Conference of 1907, the world witnessed with surprise Europe's welcome to the small States of South and Central America as equal members of the European fraternity. The perch and the pike somehow live together.
The next argument employed against democracy is that it foments nationality, and that the latter is an association of individuals who feel their interests to be distinct from, and opposed to, those of their neighbours. Thus nations, it is concluded, are necessarily hostile to each other, since, otherwise, they would not exist at all. More than this, democracy augments that native animus, if, according to Maine, "the prejudices of the people are far stronger and more dangerous than those of the privileged classes." De Tocqueville had the same thought in mind when he wrote that nations, like men, prefer their passions to their interests.
Nevertheless, this proposition, if rigidly tested, can hardly be accepted as accurate. When Burke and Fox pressed that thesis upon Pitt in 1787 he stigmatised it as "weak and childish"; and Beaconsfield, in his day, told the House of Commons
