Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/65

 head. If the proletariat had been able to get control of the German courts, as it had got control of the Reichstag, it would have deposed him from office and condemned him to death for high treason. His treason consisted in trying to formulate a code of legislation designed to restore its old rights under the Prussian common law, destroyed by the rise of the industrial system, and to grant it many new and valuable benefits.

“Let any competently instructed person,’” says Sir Henry Maine, “turn over in his mind the great epochs of scientific invention and social change during the past two centuries, and consider what would have occurred if universal suffrage had been established at any one of them.” Here, obviously, Sir Henry speaks of universal suffrage that is genuinely effective—suffrage that registers the actual will of the people accurately and automatically. As we shall see, no such thing exists in the world to-day, save in limited areas. Public policies are determined and laws are made by small minorities playing upon the fears and imbecilities of the mob—sometimes minorities of intelligent and honest men, but usually minorities of rogues. But the fact does not disturb the validity of Maine’s