would have the right alternately to prey upon and to bleed each other, according to the fortunes of the polls—and they might do it by putting forward legislative programmes which would bribe the electoral wobblers first to this side and then to that. Where, on such a device does moral right come in? Was ever anything so ludicrous as a doctrine?
As a doctrine of right, majority rule has but doubtful ground to stand on. As an expedient, for practical use under sound conditions, there is much to be said for it. But when once you recognise it as a mere working expedient, then its workings must be watched, proved, and sometimes corrected and checked—by a minority.
Majority rule is only tolerable when it has the equal rights of man and woman firmly fixed as its goal; and it is as tending to the establishment of that doctrine that majority rule is acceptable (with some caution and reservations) to our progressive sense of citizenship.
In the great historic moments of upheaval which have brought it about, it has consciously or subconsciously been an attempt to get rid of the bad principle of dominance over others. It expresses the hope, or it embodies the probability, that a majority will be so broadly made up of all sorts and conditions—of the whole chemical composition of human society, that is to say—that in a government prompted and directed by a majority there will be no
