inated by the holders of
economic power, are, in fact, always dominated by aristocracies with
land or by the aristocracies of wealth. It is the hand at the helm
guides the ship. The larger the State is the more easily do the holders
of economic power gain political power. The theory of representative
government held good in practice, I think, so long as parliaments were
engaged in formulating general rights, the right, for example, of the
individual to think or profess any religion he pleased; his right not
to be deprived of liberty or life without open trial by his
fellow-citizens. So long as legislatures were affirming or maintaining
these rights, which rich and poor equally desired, they were justified.
But when legislatures began to intervene in economic matters, in the
struggles between rich and poor, between capital and labor, it became
at once apparent the holders of economic power had also political power;
and that the institution which operated fairly where universal rights
were considered did not operate fairly when there was a conflict between
particular interests.

The jury of the nation was found to be packed. At least nine-tenths of
the population in Great Britain, for example, belong to the wage-earning
class. At least nine-tenths of the members of legislatures belong to
the classes possessing land or capital. Now, why any member of the
wage-earning class should look with hope to such assemblies I cannot
understand. Their ideal is, or should be, economic freedom, together
with democratic control of industries, an ideal in every way opposed
to the ideal of the majority of the members of the legislatures. The
fiction that representative assemblies will work for the general good is
proclaimed with enthusiasm; but the moment we examine their actions
we see it is not so, and we discover the cause. Where the nation is
capitalist and capitalism is the dominant economic factor, legislatures
invariably act to uphold it, and legislation tends to fix the system
more securely. We see in Great Britain that wage-earners are now openly
regarded by the legislatures as a class who must not be allowed the same
freedom in life as the wealthy. They must be registered, inspected,
and controlled in a way which the wealthy would bitterly resent if the
legislation referred to themselves. After economic inferiority has been
enforced on them by capital, the stigma of human inferiority is attached
to the wage-earners by the legisla