in the expenditure of the large sums entrusted to a
public body. Sometimes there are even, one learns, indications of that
good-humoured and not ill-meant laxity in expending public money which
has had such disastrous results in America, and which lends itself so
easily to exploitation by those in whom the habit of giving and taking
personal favours has hardened into systematic fraud. When one of the
West Ham Guardians, two years ago, committed suicide on being charged
with corruption, the _Star_ sent down a representative who filled a
column with the news. 'His death,' we were told, 'has robbed the
district of an indefatigable public worker. County Council, Board of
Guardians, and Liberal interests all occupied his leisure time.' 'One of
his friends' is described as saying to the _Star_ reporter, 'You do not
need to go far to learn of his big-souled geniality. The poor folks of
the workhouse will miss him badly.'[82] When one has waded through masses
of evidence on American municipal corruption, that phrase about
'big-souled geniality' makes one shudder.

[82] _Star_, November 28th, 1906.

The early history of the co-operative and trade-union movements in
England is full of pathetic instances of this kind of failure, and both
movements show how a new and more stringent ideal may be slowly built
up. But such an ideal will not come of itself without an effort, and
must be part of the conscious organised thought of each generation if it
is to be permanently effective.

Those difficulties have in the past been mainly pointed out by the
opponents of democracy. But if democracy is to succeed they must be
frankly considered by the democrats themselves; just as it is the
engineer who is trying to build the bridge, and not the ferry-owner,
who is against any bridge at all, whose duty it is to calculate the
strain which the materials will stand. The engineer, when he wishes to
increase the margin of safety in his plans, treats as factors in the
same quantitative problem both the chemical expedients by which he can
strengthen his materials and the structural changes by which the strain
on those materials can be diminished. So those who would increase the
margin of safety in our democracy must estimate, with no desire except
to arrive at truth, both the degree to which the political strength of
the individual citizen can, in any given time, be actually increased by
moral and educational changes, and the possibility of preservin