nd recognized primacy, to originate resistance; none too
strong to be crushed by the animosity of a Fiske or a Gould, or
grievously wronged by a corrupt corporation like that of New York, a
dishonest political organization like Tammany Hall, or a powerful
Tramway or Railway Company. The consequence is, that not only the
individual citizen, but a whole community submits to high-handed
oppression, to administrative and judicial corruption, to impudent
usurpation and flagrant illegalities, such as the greatest of English
corporations would never dream of attempting. Perhaps the most
oppressive and insolent exactions, to which living Englishmen have as
yet submitted, are those of the Water Companies of London; but the
offenders have repeatedly been resisted and brought to justice; and it
is in London alone, the one English city which lacks natural leaders and
protectors, which is too large for any citizen or body of citizens--save
that great City Corporation which English Radicalism has marked for
destruction--to speak and act in its name, that the Water Companies
would have been endured for five years. Even in London, no such
high-handed interference with the rights of property and the comfort of
families, as the Elevated Railways of New York, with their uncompensated
destruction of individual privacy and comfort throughout many of the
wealthiest streets of the first city in the Union, would have been
obviously and utterly impossible.

The tolerance of Democracy for what seem to English ideas the grossest
form of oppression--oppression systematic and legal, arbitrary power and
class privilege, formally embodied in the law and made a fundamental
principle of government--is illustrated by that clause of the Code
Napoleon, which exempts the whole bureaucracy of France from civil or
criminal liability. No official can be prosecuted, no redress sought at
law for the abuse of powers the most extensive, affecting every man's
daily life--powers which enable their holder to harass and almost ruin
individuals and communities at his pleasure--save by permission of the
Council of State, a body of officials inclined of course to believe and
to shield its subordinates. This law has been sustained by each
successive Government that has seized the reins of centralized power;
nor are we aware that any serious effort has been made to repeal it.

The tyranny of democracy is, as Mill insists, the most formidable,
searching, and irresistible