only be aware intellectually of certain external or verbally ostensible facts about his fellow, but must also in some sense recreate for himself what it is that the other actually feels. Separate persons can thus understand one another only so far as they are alike. It follows that they can promote a common end only so far as they are alike. Now society involves there being laws which bind all citizens alike. But it is as a means to a common end that these laws ought to be made. Therefore it is only so far as men are alike that they ought to constrain one another by laws.

"

We discovered that "the common people" cannot mean simply "people who are not exceptional," and that although people are not exactly alike or "common' they are so to a certain extent. To that extent, then, they may rightly constrain one another by laws. So that the root implication of "the rule of the common people" is that people should make laws for one another only so far as they are alike or common. And that truth coincides with our conclusion as to the best form of government.

Intimately bound up with this demonstrable truth is the conviction that what is common to all men is, in the words of a living Democrat, "not only more important but infinitely more important than the accidents by which men differ". If this is not so "then," he goes on, "no scheme of jurisprudence, no act of justice, no movement of human indignation, no exaltation of fellowship, has any meaning".

It has been concluded, then, that the purposes to be expressed in laws ought to be prescribed by the deliber

ate judgment of a determining majority of the citizens. Let us consider next how the truth of this conclusion ought to find expression in England to-day.

Consider the citizen first in his public capacity as lawmaker. We noticed in passing that the general will has in this country to get itself expressed through representative machinery. That is to say, the makers of our laws have to act through a few men who discuss and vote on particular laws on behalf of the makers. The makers themselves, as has been said, include all those whose actions or influence determine the law-passers whether or not to pass any bill that comes before them.

How then ought the English citizen to act in his lawmaking capacity?

First, as a voter for those who actually pass or reject particular bills.

We shall find it follow necessarily from the principles above laid down that just so far as an elector believes that a candidate understands that good which is common to the elector and his fellows better than the elector himself understands it, so far, and no farther, would he be right in authorising this other to determine by himself the purpose to be expressed in laws. So far as he believes the candidate not to understand this good better than does he himself, he ought not to support him at an election except so far as he can be certain that he would vote in Parliament not for what he (the candidate) may think best, nor for what he may think this elector ought to desire or really wants, but for what the elector himselt does in fact give himself out to desire.

Secondly, as a law-passer, that is to say, a representative of a particular body of law-makers, of a specimen piece of the general will.

It follows that he ought to determine by himself the purpose to be expressed in laws just so far as, and no farther than he has been or would be authorised so to do by those law-makers whom he represents. Otherwise he ought to vote in Parliament for what these, or a determining majority of them, actually give themselves out to desire.

Thirdly, as debater and counsellor-whether in Parliament or elsewhere.

He ought to counsel to the best of his knowledge and power, to speak the truth, nothing but the truth, and, so far as time permits, the whole truth. He may find himself speaking as counsellor against that for which as representative he votes, or he may even on occasion denounce his electorate as knaves or fools. If such discrepancies occur very often, it should rest with his own. conscience, and with the common sense of his electorate, whether he will continue to represent them.

Fourthly, as committee-man, his endeavour ought to be to express and fulfil a predetermined purpose, not to determine that purpose himself.

If an inquirer has followed so far the reasoning of this chapter, he cannot doubt that this is what ought to be done in England. Turning from that to what is done he will see that England is not a Democracy, that those who profess Democracy either do not understand what it means or do not so care for it as to strive for its being effective. Let him examine, for example, the theory

even of the leader of the Labour Party, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, in his book 'Socialism and Government'.

"It is," he says, "the task of the statesman who knows how far expressed desire is not real desire, who understands how he is to speak for what is in the heart but not on the lips of the people, and who, without mandates, and even against mandates, does what the people really want."

This, of course, is not Democracy, though it may be a passable counsel of despair. But even if Mr. MacDonald despairs of Democracy, he must recognise how infinitely dangerous this theory is. It would have no argument against the worst of tyrants, for it permits anyone who happens to get power to claim that whatever he chooses to do is just what the people really want, if they only knew it.

It is not within the scope of this chapter to examine the details of our existing oligarchy or to outline political reforms. But the fact that an oligarchy exists to-day under the forms of that Democracy whose triumph the political text-books acclaim, shows that political power is not real without economic resource.

Let us examine those current theories which seem to admit this, and ask how far the practice of their own theory would make Democracy real,

Let us take first the theory of the Fabian Society. "It works" (I quote from its "Basis ") "for the extinction of private property in land and of the consequent

individual appropriation, in the form of rent, of the price paid for permission to use the earth, as well as for the advantages of superior soils and sites. The Society, further, works for the transfer to the community of such industrial capital as can conveniently be managed socially."

Collectivists in England have made so many reservations from the old formula of 'The nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange' that one has to divide even Fabian theory into three main parts or stages. First, that of Fabian Essays,' and of such volumes in the 'Fabian Socialist Series' as 'Socialism and Individualism,' 'The Basis and Policy of Socialism,' and 'The Common Sense of Municipal Trading'. Second, that of the 'Minority Report of the 1909 Poor Law Commission'. Third, that of the younger Fabians and that of Mr. Shaw so far as he is young.

Let us take the first, to which Mr. Hubert Bland in a recent lecture invited Fabians to return. His own words (on p. 214 of 'Fabian Essays') will do as well as any for a starting-point.

"We shall be able to say we have a Socialist State on the day on which no man or group of men holds, over the means of production, property rights by which the labour of the producer can be subjected to exploitation."

Now "exploitation" means in strictness "use for one's own profit". In that strict sense it would not necessarily be evil, since the profit of one man is not necessarily inconsistent either with the greatest good of all men on the whole or even with the like profit of that particular man whose services are used, Therefore,