locomotion. It has increased the ease and speed of communicating infomation and opinion[1]. And by so doing it has made for democracy, it has made for plutocracy, it has made for great states. It has made for democracy, both by enabling the popular will to act more speedily and effectively, and by the creation of wealth which levels distinctions based on social position. But it has also increased, to an extent unimaginable even in the days of Law's system and the South Sea Bubble, that power of great finance, which manufactures through its press what is called public opinion, pulls the strings of political puppets, and is the most subtle, ubiquitous, and potent of modern political forces.
Physical science has made great democratic states possible, and, great states, or agglomerations of states, necessary. For Montesquieu, as for Aristotle, a democracy meant a body of citizens who could meet together in one place for political discussion. The body must not be too large, for as Aristotle says, if it were, what herald could address them, unless he were a Stentor. But the modern statesman, to say nothing of the modern reporter who heralds a cricket match, can, without being a Stentor, speak to the Antipodes. And science has made great states necessary by increasing both the effectiveness and the cost of munitions of war. States agglomerate both for economy and for self-defence, and small isolated states exist only by sufferance.
Since Montesquieu's time both the area and the population of the civilized world have enormously in-
- ↑ See Faguet's interesting essay, Que sera le xxme siècle, in Questions politiques (Paris, 1899).
