Page:Democracy, theoretical and practical (IA democracytheoret00hendrich).pdf/19

 been maintained, and a clash of sovereignty averted. In the seventeenth century the greatest revolution in British history arose out of a contest between Parliamentary authority and the rule of a king who claimed to derive his power from a source outside the constitution. In our time there are organizations unknown to the constitution that have essayed to challenge, and even to defy the authority of Parliament; and unless we make Up our minds whether we are to be ruled constitutionally by Cabinet, or unconstitutionally by demagogues, very serious trouble may arise. There is an old adage handed down to us from the Middle Ages that if two men ride on horseback one must ride in front. In Great Britain and the Dominions the reins of government have for over a century been in the hands of Cabinet Ministers. They hold them now with firmer hand than ever before. On them devolves the chief responsibility for safeguarding the prestige of Parliamentary government which has helped to make our race so powerful in the world.

But while it is well to entrust our duly constituted leaders with supreme authority in the conduct of national affairs, history teaches that it is right and necessary to keep them under constitutional control, and it is clear from the extension of the franchise since 1832 that British people have made up their minds to do so. There are some people who argue that a board of experts could manage the country's affairs much more cheaply and efficiently than a Cabinet dependent upon Parliament. Perhaps they could—for a time, and then, if members of the board went the customary way of bureaucracies and oligarchies in the past, they would become selfish and corrupt, and, in the absence of constitutional control, it would require a revolution to remove them. Revolu-