be ready to submit to the same conditions which it imposes upon others; and that it must not set up qualification, or prohibition from qualification, without any liability of that prohibition falling upon itself. It must make the liability fairly equal.
The specious excuse and justification for government by majority, as put forward by the materialists, is that, latent, within it, lies the physical force of the nation. (I may say, in passing, that the physical force of the nation lies latent in every form of government which secures the assent of the governed; and only ceases to be latent when some of it gets on to its hind-legs and insists on another form of government; and to be effective, that "some of it" need not always be a majority.)
But it is no use talking of physical force being the basis and the moral justification of majority rule—it is no use invoking the physical force argument—unless your majority is also prepared to go to the trouble of exercising it and paying the price for exercising it. And the main phenomenon of our present form of government by majority is that the majority won't take any trouble at all; that, taken in the bulk, they care very little, and won't put themselves to inconvenience—certainly won't risk physical discomfort and pain—unless government has very seriously incommoded them by damaging or by neglecting their interests.
If the physical force basis is to be your full
