Introduction.

"The Gods have appointed it so; no Pitt nor body of Pitts, or mortal creatures, can appoint it otherwise. Democracy, sure enough, is here: the tramp of its million feet is on all streets and thoroughfares, the sound of its bewildered thousandfold voice is heard in all meetings and speakings, in all thinkings and modes and activities of men."

To some political philosophers this forms a

Attitude of politicians in relation to this fact.

subject of rejoicing, to others of regret. The politician, as such, neither regrets it nor rejoices at it. His business is to use the facts and forces page 6 around him, as best he can, to promote the happiness, first of the community of which he finds himself a member, and secondly of the world.

The defects which are supposed to incapacitate a democracy for the management of international affairs are its fickleness, its ignorance, its liability to be carried away by gusts of passion. Now the whole of these defects have frequently been found, and found together, in the management of international affairs by a pure despotism; and if the first and last have been less often observed under an oligarchic government, the second has assuredly not been wanting. We must meet the accusation brought against democracy with a frank admission of its truth in the past.

Democracies, putting aside the case of the United States, the circumstances of which are too unlike ours to make the example of much consequence in the present connection, have usually been fickle in the management of international affairs, have been ignorant, and have been liable to be carried away by gusts of passion.

In order to do this successfully, three things are requisite.