icult to imagine an illustration more vivid than this of
the error to which I am now referring--the common error of ascribing to
majorities in democratic communities powers which they do not possess,
and which, as I said before, no kind of government possesses, whether it
be that of a democracy or of an autocrat. That a majority of the voters
in any democratic country can enact any laws they please at any given
moment which happen to be in accordance with what "X" calls their then
"way of thinking," and perhaps enforce them for a moment, is no doubt
perfectly true. But life is not made up of isolated moments or periods.
It is a continuous process, in which each moment is affected by the
moments that have gone before, and by the prospective character of the
moments that are to come after. If it were not for this fact, the
majority of the voters of New York State, "by electing a governor of
their own way of thinking," might not only put a limit to the income
which any citizen might possess. It might do a great deal more besides.
It might enact a law which limited the amount which any citizen might
eat. It might limit everybody to two ounces a day. Besides enacting that
no father should bequeath his wealth to his children, it might enact
just as readily that no father should have the custody of his children.
It might enact, in obedience to the persuasions of some plausible quack,
that no one should take any medicines but a single all-curing pill.
There is nothing in the principles so solemnly laid down by "X" which
would render any of these enactments more impossible than those which he
himself contemplates. But if such enactments were made by the so-called
all-powerful majority, through a governor of their own way of thinking,
what would be the result? If a law forbade the citizens to eat enough
to keep themselves alive, it might perhaps be obeyed throughout Monday,
but it would be broken by Tuesday morning. A law which deprived fathers
of the care of their own children might just as well be a law which
decreed that no children should be born. A law which decreed that no
remedy but the same quack pill should be applied to any disease, whether
cholera, appendicitis, or small-pox, would be either disregarded from
the beginning, or would soon be repealed by a pestilence. In short, if
any one of these ridiculous laws were enacted, the very voters who voted
for it would disregard it as soon as they realised its consequences; and