Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/205

Rh he has not been able or willing to satisfy, or a combination of these two causes. This is so truly the case that a ministerial crisis, which appears to transfer the power from the hands of one into those of the other party utterly and diametrically opposed to it, is yet powerless to effect any radical change in the interior policy of a Government. The relation of the individual to the State remains the same as of old, the private citizen need hardly notice when he reads his newspaper, that another party has climbed to the summit of power and another Cabinet has replaced the old. The designations Liberal and Conservative are simply masks for the real motives of all parliamentary contests, conflicts, campaigns and changes—ambition and egotism.

This is the colossal lie of our modern political life with its many different strata. In several countries the fiction of representative legislation is the screen behind which is concealed an absolute, "by the grace of God" monarchy. In those nations in which it is an actual reality, where the representative body really reigns and governs, it amounts to nothing but a dictatorship of certain persons, who in turn, obtain control of the supreme power. Theoretically representative legislation ensures the fulfillment of the will of the majority; in reality it only carries out the will of half a dozen party leaders, their advisers and standard-bearers. Theoretically the opinions of the representatives should be formed or influenced, by the arguments advanced in the parliamentary debates; in reality they are not influenced by them in the slightest, but depend entirely upon the party leader or upon private interests. Theoretically the representatives should have only the good of the commonwealth before their eyes; in reality their only thought is how to advance their private interests and those of their friends at the expense of the