And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being ignorant of what it is his duty to learn."
And further on he says:
"In all disputes between them (the governed) and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people. Experience may perhaps justify me in going further. When popular discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed that there has been something found amiss in the constitution or in the conduct of government. The people have no interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error and not their crime. But with the governing part of the State it is far otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design as well as by mistake. . . . And if this presumption in favour of the subject against the trustees of power be not the more probable, I am sure it is the more comfortable speculation; because it is more easy to change an administration than to reform a people."
There, then, is a great authority, Edmund Burke, maintaining that governments are more liable to wilful error than those whom they govern—and the main value of majority rule is that it tends to bring the presumption round to the side of government, by making the voice of government also the voice of the people. I do not think the claims of majority rule can be put on any higher footing than that—that if
