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moral and religious influences which constitute for the State an indispensable element of strength. The State remains master alone of material and, it may be, of intellectual forces, but both one and the other are vain when unsupported by the forces of faith. Little by little, therefore, instead of the imagined equality of influence of the State and Church in a political alliance, inequality and antagonism appear. The position in any case is an abnormal one, which must lead either to the predominance of the Church over the apparently dominant State, or to revolution.

Such are the hidden dangers of the system, so lauded by Liberal theorists, of severance of Church and State. The system of State or Established Churches has many defects, many inconveniences, and many difficulties; it does not preclude the possibility of antagonism or conflict. But it is absurd to suppose that it has outlived its time, and that the formula of Cavour is the only key to the solution of all the difficulties of the most difficult of questions. The formula of Cavour is the fruit of that political doctrinarianism which regards all questions of faith merely as political questions of the equalisation of rights. It lacks spiritual insight, as lacked it another famous political formula, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, which to the present day weighs upon superficial minds with a fatal burden. In both cases the passionate apostles of freedom mistake in assuming freedom in equality. Bitter experience has proven a hundred times that freedom does not depend from equality, and that equality is in no wise freedom. It is

equally absurd to believe that the equalisation of Churches and religions before the State must result in freedom of belief. The history of modern times demonstrates that freedom and equality are not identical, and that freedom in no way depends from equality.

THE NEW DEMOCRACY

WHAT is this freedom by which so many minds are agitated, which inspires so many insensate actions, so many wild speeches, which leads the people so often to misfortune? In the democratic sense of the word, freedom is the right of political power, or, to express it otherwise, the right to participate in the government of the State. This universal aspiration for a share in government has no constant limitations, and seeks no definite issue, but incessantly extends, so that we might apply to it the words of the ancient poet about dropsy: crescit indulgens sibi. For ever extending its base, the new Democracy now aspires to universal suffrage-a fatal error, and one of the most remarkable in the history of mankind. By this means, the political power so passionately demanded by Democracy would be shattered into a number of infinitesimal bits, of which each citizen acquires a single one. What will he do with it, then? how will he employ it? In the result it has undoubtedly been shown that in the attainment of this aim Democracy violates its sacred formula of "Freedom indissolubly joined with Equality." It is shown that this apparently equal distribution of "freedom" among all involves the total destruction of equality. Each vote, representing an inconsiderable fragment of power, by itself signifies nothing;

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an aggregation of votes alone has a relative value. The result may be likened to the general meetings of shareholders in public companies. By themselves individuals are ineffective, but he who controls a number of these fragmentary forces is master of all power, and directs all decisions and dispositions. We may well ask in what consists the superiority of Democracy. Everywhere the strongest man becomes master of the State; sometimes a fortunate and resolute general, sometimes a monarch or administrator with knowledge, dexterity, a clear plan of action, and a determined will. In a Democracy, the real rulers are the dexterous manipulators of votes, with their placemen, the mechanics who so skilfully operate the hidden springs which move the puppets in the arena of democratic elections. Men of this kind are ever ready with loud speeches lauding equality; in reality, they rule the people as any despot or military dictator might rule it. The extension of the right to participate in elections is regarded as progress and as the conquest of freedom by democratic theorists, who hold that the more numerous the participants in political rights, the greater is the probability that all will employ this right in the interests of the public welfare, and for the increase of the freedom of the people. Experience proves a very different thing. The history of mankind bears witness that the most necessary and fruitful reforms-the most durable measures-emanated from the supreme will of statesmen, or from a minority enlightened by lofty ideas and deep knowledge, and that, on the contrary, the extension of the representative principle is accom

panied by an abasement of political ideas and the vulgarisation of opinions in the mass of the electors. It shows also that this extension-in great Stateswas inspired by secret aims to the centralisation of power, or led directly to dictatorship. In France, universal suffrage was suppressed with the end of the Terror, and was re-established twice merely to affirm the autocracy of the two Napoleons. In Germany, the establishment of universal suffrage served merely to strengthen the high authority of a famous statesman who had acquired popularity by the success of his policy. What its ultimate consequences will be, Heaven only knows!

The manipulation of votes in the game of Democracy is of the commonest occurrence in most European states, and its falsehood, it would seem, has been exposed to all; yet few dare openly to rebel against it. The unhappy people must bear the burden, while the Press, herald of a supposititious public opinion, stifles the cry of the people with its shibboleth, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." But to an impartial mind, all this is nothing better than a struggle of parties, and a shuffling with numbers and names. The voters, by themselves inconsiderable unities, acquire a value in the hands of dexterous agents. This value is realised by many means mainly, by bribery in innumerable forms, from gifts of money and trifling articles, to the distribution of places in the services, the financial departments, and the administration. Little by little a class of electors has been formed which lives by the sale of votes to one or another