they trust who, by neighbourhood, by sympathetic knowledge of their own state, or actual share in it, by superior powers of mind and a larger fund of information, are qualified to be their leaders in forming opinion and their instruments in the policy they adopt.  These leaders may be called demagogues.  They may be thought to employ only resources of trickery upon dupes for selfish ends; but such a view, generally, is a shallow one, and not justified by facts.  It is right in the masses to make men like themselves and nigh to them, especially those born and bred in their own condition of life, their leaders, in preference to men, however educated, benevolent, and upright, who are not embodiments of the social conditions, needs, and aspirations of the people in their cruder life, if it in fact substantially be so, and to allow these men, so chosen, to find a leader among themselves.  Such a man is a true chief of a party, who is not an individual holding great interests in trust and managing them with benevolent despotism by virtue of his own superior brain; he is the incarnation, as a party chief, of other brains and wills, a representative exceeding by far in wisdom and power himself, a man in whom the units of society, millions of them, have their governmental life.  No doubt he has great qualities of sympathy, comprehension, understanding, tact, efficient power, in order to become a chief; but he leads by following, he relies on his sense of public support, he rises by virtue of the common will, the common sense, which store themselves in him.  Such the leaders of the people have always been.

If this process—­and it is to be observed that as the scale of power rises the more limited elements of social influence enter into the result with more determining force—­be apparently crude in its early stages, and imperfect at the best, is it different from the process of social expansion in other parts of life?  Wherever masses of men are entering upon a rising and larger life, do not the same phenomena occur? in religion, for example, was there not a similar popular crudity, as it is termed by some, a vulgarity as others name it, in the Methodist movement, in the Presbyterian movement, in the Protestant movement, world-wide?  Was English Puritanism free from the same sort of characteristics, the things that are unrefined as belong to democratic politics in another sphere?  The method, the phenomena, are those that belong to life universal, if life be free and efficient in moving masses of men upward into more noble ranges.  Men of the people lead, because the people are the stake.  On the other hand, educated leaders, however well-intentioned, may be handicapped if they are not rooted deeply in the popular soil.  Literary education, it must never be forgotten, is not specially a preparation for political good judgment.  It is predominantly concerned, in its high branches, with matters not of immediate political consequence—­with books generally, science, history, language, technical processes