Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/470

]? 0 0 AtOMIC C ONFii?I?i? N C?,--- B OMBA I r &utocr&t, whether he be & single individual or whethe? the express/on be applied to & bureaucracy, man. es most things without seeking a?vice at all, and if counsel ts asked for, there is no obligation to follow /t. But & democratic form of ?overnment consists of popular representst, ives who are chosen not because they are supposed to be endowed with special oapaciti? but because they stand for s certain policy. They are eleot? not in order to do tj?mgs themselves but in order to see that others do them. Aceordingly they &rs bound, after choosing their specialists, to be guided by them. Or if they are not thus ?i? they set &t their own risk, with the prospect of in. curring the mdignat/on of the ?leetorats, should - disastrous consequences ensue. All 'this is an&ersto? readily enough when the advice in question is th? of an engineer, a sanitary offi?r, or a lawyer. Where. the advice is that of an economist it is somet?es grasped less clearly. And .yet the results of playing tricks with the currency, of impoa[? a ba? sys?m of taxation, or of embarking policy may prove f? more ruinous to the nation than building a few unsatisfactory types of battleship, wasting money on some mistakeh health measure, or sus?ning a defeat in the law-courts. ' To be sure, the knowledge of an expert di?s from that of a layman not in kind but in degree. Nevertheless the difference in value between the con- sidered judgment of the man who devotes all his life and thought to one group of questions and that of the man in the street may be so great as to preclu?]e all comparison. And, Gentlemen, if the views of s single person who has made one sphere may reasonably be those of the amateur, how ought to be attseh? himself a presumed special?t ? to outweigh much more weight to the collective voice of econo.