One is told that on such a body many members feel it difficult to realise that the way in which a well-intentioned man may deal with his own personal expenditure, his continued patronage, for instance, of a rather inefficient tradesman because he has a large family, or his refusal to contest an account from a dislike of imputing bad motives, is fatal if applied in the expenditure of the large sums entrusted to a public body.  Sometimes there are even, one learns, indications of that good-humoured and not ill-meant laxity in expending public money which has had such disastrous results in America, and which lends itself so easily to exploitation by those in whom the habit of giving and taking personal favours has hardened into systematic fraud.  When one of the West Ham Guardians, two years ago, committed suicide on being charged with corruption, the Star sent down a representative who filled a column with the news.  ‘His death,’ we were told, ’has robbed the district of an indefatigable public worker.  County Council, Board of Guardians, and Liberal interests all occupied his leisure time.’  ’One of his friends’ is described as saying to the Star reporter, ’You do not need to go far to learn of his big-souled geniality.  The poor folks of the workhouse will miss him badly.’[82] When one has waded through masses of evidence on American municipal corruption, that phrase about ‘big-souled geniality’ makes one shudder.

[82] Star, November 28th, 1906.

The early history of the co-operative and trade-union movements in England is full of pathetic instances of this kind of failure, and both movements show how a new and more stringent ideal may be slowly built up.  But such an ideal will not come of itself without an effort, and must be part of the conscious organised thought of each generation if it is to be permanently effective.

Those difficulties have in the past been mainly pointed out by the opponents of democracy.  But if democracy is to succeed they must be frankly considered by the democrats themselves; just as it is the engineer who is trying to build the bridge, and not the ferry-owner, who is against any bridge at all, whose duty it is to calculate the strain which the materials will stand.  The engineer, when he wishes to increase the margin of safety in his plans, treats as factors in the same quantitative problem both the chemical expedients by which he can strengthen his materials and the structural changes by which the strain on those materials can be diminished.  So those who would increase the margin of safety in our democracy must estimate, with no desire except to arrive at truth, both the degree to which the political strength of the individual citizen can, in any given time, be actually increased by moral and educational changes, and the possibility of preserving or extending or inventing such elements in the structure of democracy as may prevent the demand upon him being too great for his strength.