Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/364

312 tinguished men, and democracy would have been spared its greatest reproach, and one of its most formidable evils. When the Democracy is supreme there is no One or Few strong enough for dissentient opinions, and injured or menaced interests to lean upon. The great difficulty of democratic government has hitherto seemed to be, how to provide in a democratic society, what circumstances have provided hitherto in all the societies whidi have maintained themselves ahead of others—a social support—a point d'appui, for individual resistance to the tendencies of the ruling power; a protection, a rallying point for opinions and interests which the ascendant public opinion views with disfavour. For want of such a point d'appui, the older societies and all but a few of the modern ones, either fell into dissolution or became stationary (which, means slow deterioration), through the exclusive predominance of a part only of the conditions of social and mental well-being. The only quarter in which to look for a supplement or completing corrective to the instincts of a democratic majority is the instructed minority, but in the ordinary mode of constituting democracy this minority has no organ; Mr. Hare's system provides one. The representatives who would be returned to Parliament by the aggregate of minorities would afford that organ in its greatest perfection. A separate organization of the instructed classes, even if practicable, would be invidious, and could only escape from being offensive by being totally without influence. But if the elite of these classes formed part of the Parliament by the same title as any other of its members, by representing the same number of citizens, the same numerical fraction of the national will, their presence could give tunbrage to nobody, while they would be in the position of highest vantage both for making their opinions and counsels heard on all important subjects, and for taking an active part in public business. Their abilities would probably draw to them more than their numerical share of the actual administration of government, as the Athenians did not confide responsible public functions to Cleon or Hyperbolus (the employment of Cleon at Pylus and Amphipolis was purely exceptional) but Niceas and Theramenes and Alcibiades were in constant employment, both at home and abroad, though known to sympathise more with oligarchy than with democracy. The instructed minority would in the actual voting count only for their numbers, but as a moral power they would count for much more in virtue of their knowledge and of the influence it would give them over the rest An arrangement better adapted to keep popular opinion within reason and justice, and to guard it from the various deteriorating influences which assail the weak side of democracy, could scarcely by human ingenuity be devised. A democratic people would in this way be provided with what in any other way it would almost certainly miss—leaders of a grade of intellect and character better than itself. Modem democracy would have its occasional Pericles, and its habitual group of superior and guiding minds. With all this array of reasons of the most fundamental character on the affirmative side of the question, what is there on the negative? Nothing that will sustain examination when people can once be induced to