Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/378

 364 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

will of the state. Hence the form of government follows the introduction of subordinate classes into lasting partnership in sovereignty. These subordinate classes have been forced to combine first in voluntary associations outside the state. This provides them with coercive power adequate to force entrance into the constitution. When once admitted, they are admitted as already organized, simply by legalizing their voluntary associa- tion and incorporating it into the structure of government. The House of Lords is the legalized organization of hereditary property; the House of Commons is the legalization of the national conventions and lobbies of merchants and small land- owners representing transferable property.' A law to be enacted must gain the consent of king, lords, and commons, each sitting independently, and not coerced by the others. In other words, each social class has a veto on the others. This is provided in the structure of government, which is therefore all-important in the substitution of order in the place of caprice. Each class must be furnished with organs for expressing its will which are appropriate to its own character. This is more likely to be the case where these organs have been previously developed in voluntary associations. The aristocracy, being limited in numbers and wealthy, can meet as a direct primary assembly, the house of lords. The plutocracy, being widely scattered, of limited means, and relatively numerous, must act through their leading men as designated in their local guilds, corporations, and associa- tions of freemen. Democracy, being most widely extended and of most diversified interests, is unable to act through the other forms, and therefore tends to direct legislation. Where the machinery of government is not adapted to these several classes, or where a new political power has been injected into the old machinery, there are the conditions for political corruption. The unparalleled corruption of British politics previous to the Reform Bill sprang from the mixed machinery of aristocracy and plutocracy. The corruption of today in America and France, and its recent revival in British cities, springs from universal

'See Commons, Pro. Rep., pp. 14-16; Hearn, The Gove^tnnent of England, pp. 423-8.