demagogue and a statesman is that the
former converts human beings into a mob, while the latter exalts a mob
into a company of human beings. It is the difference between a pander
and a prophet. It is true that men of a conservative temper hate the
pander and the prophet almost equally. Shakespeare, for instance, who
was a bad politician as well as a good poet, mocks at Utopias no less
than at bombast in that unhistorical picture he suggests of Jack
Cade:--

CADE: There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold
for a penny: the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and I
will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall
be in common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass;
and when I am king, as king I will be,----

ALL: God save your majesty!

CADE: I thank you, good people: there shall be no money; all
shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all
in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and
worship me, their lord.

DICK: The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

CADE: Nay, that I mean to do.

To many of us, if you omit Cade's occasional lapses into
individualism--as in his desire to be worshipped as a king--this will
seem an admirable programme. It will more than hold its own in
comparison with any programme that ever originated in Newcastle or
Birmingham. William Morris himself might have had that vision of
restoring Cheapside to green fields, and even the extremest
Marconoclast could hardly go further than Cade in suggestions for a
summary way with lawyers. Who is there who is not whole-heartedly with
Cade for the abolition of poverty? In fact, there seems little to
criticise in the man as Shakespeare drew him, except that he made his
proposals for personal, not for social ends. That, I believe, is the
real essence of demagogy.

To be a demagogue is not to advocate one thing rather than another. It
depends on the manner, not on the matter, of one's proposals. One may
reap one's own glory out of praise of the New Jerusalem no less than
out of the most vulgar incitements to war and hatred. It is a
temptation to which every man is subject who has ever stood on a cart
above a crowd of his fellows. One feels tempted to play on them, like
a child who finds itself left alone with a piano. It is worse than
that. A crowd is like a sea of liquor, the fumes of which go to an
orator's head and make hi