Only a comparatively small minority are capable at any one time of exercising political, economic, and civil liberties in an able, efficient, or thoroughly worthy manner; and a regime wrought for the benefit of such a minority would become at best a state, in which economic, political, and social power would be very unevenly distributed—­a state like the Orleans Monarchy in France of the “Bourgeoisie” and the “Intellectuals.”  Such a state might well give its citizens fairly good government, as did the Orleans Monarchy; but just in so far as the mass of the people had any will of its own, it could not arouse vital popular interest and support; and it could not contribute, except negatively, to the fund of popular good sense and experience.  The lack of such popular support caused the death of the French liberal monarchy; and no such regime can endure, save, as in England, by virtue of a somewhat abject popular acquiescence.  As long as it does endure, moreover, it tends to undermine the virtue of its own beneficiaries.  The favored minority, feeling as they do tolerably sure of their position, can scarcely avoid a habit of making it somewhat too easy for one another.  The political, economic, and intellectual leaders begin to be selected without any sufficient test of their efficiency.  Some sort of a test continues to be required; but the standards which determine it drift into a condition of being narrow, artificial, and lax.  Political, intellectual, and social leadership, in order to preserve its vitality needs a feeling of effective responsibility to a body of public opinion as wide, as varied, and as exacting as that of the whole community.

The desirable democratic object, implied in the traditional democratic demand for equality, consists precisely in that of bestowing a share of the responsibility and the benefits, derived from political and economic association, upon the whole community.  Democracies have assumed and have been right in assuming that a proper diffusion of effective responsibility and substantial benefits is the one means whereby a community can be supplied with an ultimate and sufficient bond of union.  The American democracy has attempted to manufacture a sufficient bond out of the equalization of rights:  but such a bond is, as we have seen, either a rope of sand or a link of chains.  A similar object must be achieved in some other way; and the ultimate success of democracy depends upon its achievement.

The fundamental political and social problem of a democracy may be summarized in the following terms.  A democracy, like every political and social group, is composed of individuals, and must be organized for the benefit of its constituent members.  But the individual has no chance of effective personal power except by means of the secure exercise of certain personal rights.  Such rights, then, must be secured and exercised; yet when they are exercised, their tendency is to divide the community into divergent