require the examination of details by bodies that can act as committees, that fit them in to circumstances, and that regard them not only as the embodiment of principles but as adaptations to going concerns. Very very few proposals worth submitting to a popular vote can be settled off-hand by a simple yea or nay. Matters of fundamental importance, like whether the principle of nationalization is to be applied to mines and railways, may be settled by a popular vote. Even this is not nearly so simple as it seems at a first glance, owing to the fact that in the discussion details will obtrude themselves, and the desire for change becomes weakened by divisions of opinion as to how the change should take place or in other words, from a referendum on a simple issue cannot be eliminated considerations which at best relate to matters of secondary or unessential importance to the issue itself, and thus the die is loaded in favour of a negative decision. The settlement of detail must be left to bodies that can discuss, adapt, and fit in. The most useful and democratic form of the referendum is undoubtedly a vote of no confidence in a Government. The power of censuring a Government ought to be held by the electors. This has become all the more necessary owing to the deteriorated character of appeals to constituencies at elections, and to the fact that under our present system of fighting in single member constituencies, representation cannot be relied upon to give a Parliament which in its work has the support of a majority in the country. This power in the background would be an effective corrective to Ministers tempted to abuse the dictatorial powers given to them by servile majorities in Parliament, and also to followers who, trusting their political fortunes to party

allegiance, show a dog-like obedience to the party Whip. A Parliamentary majority can never altogether forget outside public opinion, but it would be none the worse if it never got beyond the reach of the arm of that opinion.

The practical problems of democracy turn largely upon the meaning that is attached to " responsible." If we mean that the elector should be practically the legislator we find ourselves, in the end, pushed into an impossible position. The elector cannot be the legislator. In order to try and put him in that position, we should have to create some such machinery as the witenagemot or the gemeinde, and that is no sooner done than we find that the power of action and freedom of decision, which alone can make responsibility real, cannot be exercised for the reasons I have given. Indeed, the machinery we should then have to create is of such a character as to discourage responsible action and banish those frames of mind which characterize committees charged with patient detailed examination and adaptation. A crowd is the most irresponsible of actors for no reason except the sufficient one that it can be nothing else. Democratic responsibility belongs to a different order. It is the responsibility of the body of electors for policy, and policy is embodied in governments. If electors in a body allow themselves to be misled by cries and promises which in their enlightened moments they know to be false, they must reap the harvest of their folly. If the constitution makes no provision for a frequent checking of governments, but protects governments from public opinion within certain defined limits, e.g. a Parliamentary life of five years, revision may be desirable so that the deluded electors may not be punished too severely, but the fact remains

that the nation makes its governments. Further, the apparent power of control and check, which some advocates of democratic forms urge, gives the people in reality, less responsibility, because the means of showing it and the circumstances under which it is exercised are such as to make it ineffective. If we cannot have the substance do not let us have the form, for if we are in that position those who have the substance can use it with less scruple. The difference between power and responsibility is that the one can be exercised by mechanical means, like a mass or a majority, whereas the other requires an opportunity for adaptive judgment. Power can show itself by the forceful breaking down of a wall, responsibility can show itself only in a freedom to decide whether the wall should be broken down and how it should be broken down. Power without an opportunity to use it with responsibility is useless, and may be mischievous. Democracy requires the aid of both, and it therefore has to act in two ways-through its mass and through a differentiated function of its mass, representative leadership. I am therefore perfectly content as a democrat to regard the responsibility of electors under a democracy as a responsibility for electing a Government and choosing a policy, and if they were educated to doing that well, we should have a true democratic State.

When all is said and done, a democracy must work through a representative system and its problem is how to make that system fully responsible to it. It has to select the right sort of men-men of knowledge and men to whom public life is not merely a distinction or a pastime, but is an opportunity for service in which their hearts and their interests are. This is the supreme test of democracy's power of self

government. It does not mean that all that demo cracy has to do is to elect representatives and then leave everything to them. It means the opposite. It means that a democracy alive and intelligent, knowing its own mind and having definite conceptions of its interests, of the Society in which it lives, of the means of securing its own well-being and happiness, having chosen its representative agents will follow their work intelligently, and pursue its own political thinking whilst allowing them the full exercise of their responsibilities as representatives unless they have become so obnoxious that a censure by referendum is passed upon them.

The system through which democracy works hampers or facilitates the exercise of its intelligence, for systems should correspond to minds, and ought not to be devised solely for mechanical or other kind of convenience. To-day, the minds of masses of men (and still truer is this of women) are necessarily circumscribed. The education they have had has not been a training in intelligence. When they can read, how many can appreciate only the most trivial and desolating stuff. Scott, Milton, Addison, are as closed to them as though they could not read at all, their own history is unknown to them, and the less seriously their newspapers discuss any matter of real public importance the better chance have these sheets of making satisfactory financial returns to their proprietors. It may seem, therefore, sheer folly and perversity to allow this mass to pass important political judgments upon the highest and most complicated matters of State, and to exercise power over affairs that are very remote from its everyday experience. How can it perform such tasks with credit to itself and with

safety to the nation? When Free Trade, for instance, has to be defended by a spectre of a dear loaf, and Protection recommended by rousing latent prejudices against the foreigner, sound national economy must surely remain on an insecure foundation. When the well-disposed gods look upon such sandy foundations for States they may well tremble in Olympus. And yet the practical realities are not such as this statement suggests. It is a false statement of true facts, because it implies that the people described are under a democracy, directly responsible for government. The truth is that the representative institution produces its own trained workmen. A crowd of people with no expert knowledge and no training in capacity to govern can nevertheless secure liberty for itself, and safety and honour for its community through its representative institutions, provided that some appreciable percentage of it understands the language of liberty, safety and honour, and that that language finds a way to intelligence. So, the problem comes up again in this form: Can we by the proper use of the experiences of the mass enliven its political interests and intelligence so that we may be warranted in feeling that representative institutions will not fail us? Obviously, we must consider our system of representation in relation to the psychology of the people. If we get down near enough to the fireside and the cupboard, we find that everybody is interested in political affairs. Can we by beginning there widen the horizon of interest, retaining the political mind as we do so, and thus create from the father and mother the citizen of the world? How is that to be done?

One proposal to secure this has arisen partly out of the social divisions and the revolutionary