The means, he says, by which these rewards may be limited are ready to hand, and can be applied with the utmost ease.  They are provided by the democratic Constitution of the United States of America.  “No one can doubt, for example,” he goes on to observe, “that, if the majority of the voters of the State of New York chose to elect a governor of their own way of thinking, they could readily enact a progressive taxation of incomes which would limit every citizen of New York State to such income as the majority of voters considers sufficient for him.  And it would be particularly easy,” adds the writer, “to alienate the property of every man at death, for it is only necessary to repeal the statutes now authorising the descent of such property to the heirs and legatees of the decedent.”  Here, then, according to “X,” is an obvious way out of the difficulty, the feasibility of which no one can doubt.  A certain minority of the citizens render services essential to the majority; but these advantages are accompanied by a corresponding drawback.  The majority, by the simple use of their sovereign power as legislators, can retain the former and get rid of the latter.  The remedy is in their own hands.

It would be difficult to imagine an illustration more vivid than this of the error to which I am now referring—­the common error of ascribing to majorities in democratic communities powers which they do not possess, and which, as I said before, no kind of government possesses, whether it be that of a democracy or of an autocrat.  That a majority of the voters in any democratic country can enact any laws they please at any given moment which happen to be in accordance with what “X” calls their then “way of thinking,” and perhaps enforce them for a moment, is no doubt perfectly true.  But life is not made up of isolated moments or periods.  It is a continuous process, in which each moment is affected by the moments that have gone before, and by the prospective character of the moments that are to come after.  If it were not for this fact, the majority of the voters of New York State, “by electing a governor of their own way of thinking,” might not only put a limit to the income which any citizen might possess.  It might do a great deal more besides.  It might enact a law which limited the amount which any citizen might eat.  It might limit everybody to two ounces a day.  Besides enacting that no father should bequeath his wealth to his children, it might enact just as readily that no father should have the custody of his children.  It might enact, in obedience to the persuasions of some plausible quack, that no one should take any medicines but a single all-curing pill.  There is nothing in the principles so solemnly laid down by “X” which would render any of these enactments more impossible than those which he himself contemplates.  But if such enactments were made by the so-called all-powerful majority, through a governor of their own way of thinking, what would