Political Considerations of Vienna Period
membership of the five hundred representatives of the people according to individual occupation or abilities presents a disjointed and usually a pitiful picture. After all, no one can suppose that these chosen of the nation are also the chosen of the spirit, or even of reason. It is to be hoped that no one will expect statesmen to sprout in hundreds from the ballots of an anything but intellectual electorate. We can never sharply enough denounce the silly notion that geniuses are born of general elections. In the first place any nation has a real statesman once in a blue moon, not a hundred at a time; and in the second place the aversion of the masses for any outstanding genius is always instinctive. Sooner shall the camel pass through the eye of a needle than a great man be “discovered” by an election.
Anyone who exceeds the normal dimensions of average humanity usually personally announces his presence in world history.
But as it is, five hundred people of more than modest stature vote upon the most important interests of the nation, and install a government which has to get the approval of the exalted five hundred for every individual event and particular question that arises. The policy, in other words, is actually created by five hundred people; and it usually looks it.
Even if there were no question of the originality of these peoples’ representatives, we must remember how various are the problems awaiting solution, and in how many totally separate fields answers and decisions must be given. We can easily understand how worthless is an institution of government which entrusts the right of final determination to a mass meeting of people only a fraction of whom have any knowledge and experience in the matter under discussion. The most important economic measures are presented to a forum only a tenth of whose members have any economic training. This is simply putting the final decision on a matter into the hands of men who lack any equipment to meet it.
And so it is with every other question. Things are always settled by a majority of ignoramuses and incompetents, since the
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