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264 tion to those affairs or, if it chooses, to arrest them. The people, in this expression, is the nation as a great community of men, women, and children, knit together by a thousand bonds, having diverse interests, various abilities, manifold diversities of circumstance, but yet held to one common movement by the great laws which govern human life. In this sense the nation, as a whole, has wishes, power, will, passions, motives, and purposes, just like a man. But the sovereignty of the majority is not the equivalent for the sovereignty of the people, nor yet an expression of it; it is only the assumption by a part of the prerogatives which belong to the whole. Majority rule is based on no rational principle; it is not a permanent form of self-government; it is only a very imperfect practical expedient, for want of some better method of turning public opinion into a practical determination as to what shall be done. It is quite probable that some better device for the same end may yet be invented. No fallacies in politics are more pernicious than those which transfer to a popular majority all the old claims of the king by divine right, and lead people to believe that the notions of arbitrary and irresponsible power are not wrong, but only that they were wrong when applied to kings or aristocracies and not when applied to popular majorities.

This fallacy of course inheres in democracy by its definition. The majority profits by the subtlety of the conception of the sovereignty of the people and enjoys power without the responsibility which always follows any king, however absolute he may be. The majority cannot be called to account, not because, like a constitutional king, it has no power, but, first, because it cannot be found or seized, and second, because, like an autocrat, it will submit to no accountability. It has