democracy remains an empty
form and may even be worse than useless. On the other hand, where the
capacity exists the establishment of responsible government is the
first condition of its development. Even so it is not the sole
condition. The modern State is a vast and complex organism. The
individual voter feels himself lost among the millions. He is
imperfectly acquainted with the devious issues and large problems of the
day, and is sensible how little his solitary vote can affect their
decision. What he needs to give him support and direction is
organization with his neighbours and fellow workers. He can understand,
for example, the affairs of his trade union, or, again, of his chapel.
They are near to him. They affect him, and he feels that he can affect
them. Through these interests, again, he comes into touch with wider
questions--with a Factory Bill or an Education Bill--and in dealing with
these questions he will now act as one of an organized body, whose
combined voting strength will be no negligible quantity. Responsibility
comes home to him, and to bring home responsibility is the problem of
all government. The development of social interest--and that is
democracy--depends not only on adult suffrage and the supremacy of the
elected legislature, but on all the intermediate organizations which
link the individual to the whole. This is one among the reasons why
devolution and the revival of local government, at present crushed in
this country by a centralized bureaucracy, are of the essence of
democratic progress.

The success of democracy depends on the response of the voters to the
opportunities given them. But, conversely, the opportunities must be
given in order to call forth the response. The exercise of popular
government is itself an education. In considering whether any class or
sex or race should be brought into the circle of enfranchisement, the
determining consideration is the response which that class or sex or
race would be likely to make to the trust. Would it enter effectively
into the questions of public life, or would it be so much passive voting
material, wax in the hands of the less scrupulous politicians? The
question is a fair one, but people are too ready to answer it in the
less favourable sense on the ground of the actual indifference or
ignorance which they find or think they find among the unenfranchised.
They forget that in that regard enfranchisement itself may be precisely
the stimu