Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/44

 no good save his own good. When his affairs are prospering—which is to say, when the needs of the city man are acute, and the latter is thus at his mercy—he rams his advantage home with relentless ferocity. For him to show any altruism in such a situation, or even any common humanity, would be so strange as to appear fabulous. But when things are running against him he believes that the city man should be taxed to make up his losses: this is the alpha and omega of all the brummagem progressivism that emanates from the farm. That "progressivism," in the hands of political mountebanks, is swathed in the trappings of Service, but at the heart of it there is nothing but bald self-seeking. The yokel hates everyone who is not a yokel—and is afraid of everyone. He is democratic man in the altogether. He is the glory and bulwark of all democratic states. The city proletarian may be flustered and run amok by ideas—ideas without any sense, true enough, but still ideas. The yokel has room in his head for only one. That is the idea that God regards him fondly, and has a high respect for him—that all other men are out of favour in heaven and abandoned to the devil.