We are now told that a reaction has set in against democracy ; that the results of the democratic ideal, so far as attained, are a failure ; that the tyranny of the mob has succeeded to that of the single despot ; that in the most liberal governments of the world, even in the United States and England, where the problem of selfgovernment has been most thoroughly worked out, the people are forgetting their high ideals and are using their collective power for base and ignoble purposes ; that the moral tone of the government is lowered ; that an insane greed for wealth has infected the nations : that there is a blunting of moral responsibility and a cheapening of national aims.

THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL. 1 47

This great indictment comes from intense lovers of liberty and the truest friends of democracy. Herbert Spencer put himself on record, in his last years, as fearing that the insolent imperialism of the times and the power of reactionary forces would lead to the re-barbarization of society. John Stuart Mill said, " The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilization generally, is towards collective mediocrity." John Morley tells us that " outside natural science and the material arts, the lamp burns low ;" he complains that nations are listening to " the siren song of ambition ;" that while there is an immense increase in material prosperity, there is an immense decline of sincerity of spiritual interest. He also speaks of " the high and dry optimism which presents the existing order of things as the noblest possible, and the undisturbed sway of the majority as the way of salvation." If you care to read the summing up of the tremendous indictment against modern democracy, you will find it in Hobhouse's striking work, " Democracy and Reaction." This thouglitful author claims that the new imperialism, which has become an obsession among the great powers of the world within a few years, " stands not for widened and ennobled sense of national responsibility, but for a hard assertion of racial supremacy and national force ;" and pleads for " the unfolding of an order of ideas by which life is stimulated and guided," and for " a reasoned conception of social justice." Unfortunately there is too much truth in all these utterances.