Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/192

 his Fourteen Points, he joined in swindling a helpless foe at Versailles; it was because he tried, at Paris, to undo some of the consequences of that fraud by forcing the United States into the League of Nations. A democratic state, indeed, is so firmly grounded upon cheats and humbugs of all sorts that they inevitably colour its dealings with other nations, and so one always finds it regarded as a dubious friend and a tricky foe. That the United States, in its foreign relations, has descended to gross deceits and tergiversations since the earliest days of the Republic was long ago pointed out by Lecky; it is regarded universally to-day as a pious fraud—which is to say, as a Puritan. Nor has England, the next most eminent democratic state, got the name of perfide Albion for nothing. Ruled by shady men, a nation itself becomes shady.

In its domestic relations, of course, the same causes have the same effects. The government deals with the citizens from whom it has its mandate in a base and disingenuous manner, and fails completely to maintain equal justice among them. It not only follows the majority in persecuting those who happen to be unpopular; it