THE WILL OF THE MAJORITY.
THE word " Democracy " has of late become so am- biguous, we may almost say so prostituted to base uses, so much the happy hunting-ground of the sophist, the rhetorician, and the demagogue, that it is almost impossible to know what it means. One can only say with certainty what it does not mean when it is used by the extremists of our day. With them it never means the Will of the Majority. When they call themselves Demo- crats, and when they talk of " a Democratic solution " or of " a settlement on Democratic lines," they do not mean, hardly profess to mean, a solution or a settlement in accordance with the Will of the Majority. " Democracy " and " Democratic " have .beconie words which connote something in accordance with a particular series of ideas, or with the acceptance of the leadership of particular men, something which it is asserted the People ought to .believe, and would believe if they were not misled, but in no obligatory sense the Will of the Majority. Lenin and Trotsky, with, it is said, ten thousand homicides or more to their credit—a number which altogether demolishes the previous record of the French Terror—and with their Praetorian Guard of Chinese and Lettish soldiers and executioners, often figure as the purest of Democrats. Yet practically all the evidence shows that the Will of the Majority in Russia is against the Terrorists of Petrograd, and that their power is only maintained, like the power of any other tyrant, by the bayonet, the machine-gun, and the secret service agent. " Labour," again, is a word which has suffered eclipse. " Labour " strictly means, and of course ought invariably to mean, all those who labour, whether with their heads or their hands ; in fact, the Nation, save only that very small minority who live in disreputable indolence, the idle rich and the idle poor. As a matter of fact, however, " Labour " has come to mean something very different. We cannot define it exactly ; no one can ; but at any rate it does not mean the People, but rather a minority of the People— at most that portion of the hand labourers who are organised in Trade Unions plus a certain number of bureaucrats, like Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and Mr. Sidney Webb, who have affixed the Labour label to their own backs. " The people, Lord, the people ; Not kings and thrones, but men," was the cry of the old Chartists. In the revised edition it ought to run : " Not Shop Stewards and Independent Labour Bosses, or the representatives of International Caucuses, or German or Bolshevik secret service agents, but men." Unfortunately it does run : "'Not men, 0 Lord, but us."
In this utter confusion of thought and word, how is one to adjust the political compass ? or, to change the metaphor, bow is one to know the true metal from the base ? The touchstone is conveyed in the words which we have .placed at the head of this article : " The Will of the Majority." Those who can honestly claim to represent the Will of the Majority, and those who are willing, not merely to pay it lip-service, but to abide by it—these are the true Democrats, the true upholders of Popular Government. Those who will only obey the Will of the Majority when it happens to be their own will also, and who spend their time and energies in creating and working forms of political organisation which are meant to defeat the true Will of the Majority under the excuse that the Majority is being misled, those in a word who hold the Jacobin view held by Robespierre and Marat, are no true servants of the People. The claim that groups of men who by some accident, or by some seotional organization, are placed in a position of power have an absolute right to dictate to the Nation how it shall be governed and how it shall act, quite irrespective of the Will of the Majority, is now hardly concealed. For example, there is the claim that Labour with a big " L " shall be represented at the Peace Conference, and that Labour delegates must sit there, not as representatives of the Nation as a whole, but as representatives of a section—i.e., of Organized Labour What, we wonder, would Labour have said if Capital had demanded special representation at the Conference 1 or again, if some other class, say the Clergy, or the Lawyers, or the Press, had declared that they must. have a special channel for communication at the World's Parliament ?
If Organized Labour represented the labouring class as a whole, they would doubtless represent the majority of the Nation, but in that case there would be no need fox special Labour representation. They would command it without asking for it, and would very rightly scoff at any notion of special privileges being accorded to any sectional minorities. But the Labour men who would be sent by a Labour Govern- ment would oome to an international assembly like the Peace Conference, not as representatives of Labour, but as something higher—as the representatives of the People. In truth, this claim, the claim of Labour to be something greater than the People, in fact to be a privileged class, is almost exactly analogous to that illogical and evil claim which was made a hundred years ago by what was called the Landed Interest. It was alleged that the Nation could not do without the Landed Interest, and that therefore legis- lative proposals of all kinds and all administrative machinery mast be tested, not by the question, " Is this the Will of the Nation " but by the question, " Will it interfere with the legitimate rights of the Landed Interest I " The Landed Interest, in fine, claimed what in ancient Rome was called the prerogative vote. Anything which could be represented as inpuriowi to the Landed Interest must be vetoed, and the Landed Interest must always be the pre- dominant partner in the Legislature and in the Executive. The claim now made by the Labour Party is almost exactly
similar. Once more we find the truth of Milton's famous epigram "New presbyter is but old priest writ large." But though the Labour Party in fact demand a position of political privilege, they do not of course say this in so many words. Indeed, if occasion serves, Mr. Henderson and his lieutenants would doubtless defend themselves by saying that Labour and the Majority are one and the same. Their deeds deny their words. What fact could be more significant than that the Labour Party have never shown any real sympathy with the demand for the Referendum ? It is true, no doubt, that some of their members may have done lip-service to the Referendum in the past, and when there was no likelihood of it being established. When, however, the Referendum appeared as a practical solution, as for example when it was suggested that the People should decide by a direct vote in regard to legislation which altered fundamentals of the Constitution- e.g., the Home Rule Act—and where it was doubtful what was the trite Will of the People, the Labour Party showed no desire to make the Referendwn part of our system of government. Their influence has been thrown the other way. It is the same story in the case of Proportional Representation. That system goes far to prevent the anomaly of a minority of the voters at the polls returning a majority of the representatives, and so installing in Parliament and in supreme power, not the Will of the Majority, but the Will of the Minority. Even stronger proof that the Labour Party do not bow to the Will of the Majority, but only recognize as supreme the will of their own class, and of that class when organized, is to be found in the sinister fact that when they grow tierce the Labour leaders threaten us, not with the Will of the People, but with arbitrary action through a strike in some matter essential to the convenience or the health of the public, such as transport or the lighting of our streets and houses. Again and again the menacing whisper has run round that if the Government do not yield to this or that demand there will he a strike which will bring the whole Nation to its knees. The haughty barons of the Trade Unions threaten to hold the land to ransom, like the men who built the strong castles in the days of Stephen.
In these circumstances it is just as well that there should be speaking of the plainest character. We would have the Trade Unions to know that there are plenty of people in this country who are willing to play the part of Hampden and of the Independents to the tyranny of the new Charles and the new Prelacy of Labour. We will yield with a perfectly good grace to the Will of the Majority, but we will not yield to a new aristocracy, merely because its claim to dominate is so loud and so arrogant. The menacing cry of Hound, you mutiny ! " will not frighten the English People any more when it comes from a Shop Steward or an Independent Labour wirepuller than it did when it came from the Mediaeval King, the eighteenth-century aristocracy, or from. the Church of the Dark Ages. If it is necessary, we will have a new Runnymede and a new Magna Carta. But though free England will resist with all its powers those who play the tyrant's game under the mask of Liberty, let it not be supposed for one moment that there will be any resistance to the Will of the Majority when that Will has once been constitutionally ascertained. To that power we can and shall yield with honour and good faith, however wrong we may think it on any particular subject. As long as it remains the Will of the Majority it will be our duty as good citizens to obey it, whatever may be the consequences. We shall maintain, of course, the claim to try to convert the Majority to our views, but, subject to the inherent and in- defeasible right of free speech, free access to the minds of the voters, and the free exercise of the vote, we shall show ourselves far more loyal subjects of King Demos than those who are sworn to obey Trade Union. Committees.
Though we are speaking primarily for ourselves, we are confident that we are also speaking for the mass of those Englishmen who not only abhor the tyranny of Organized Labour, but mean to fight against it to the last by all legitimate means. There is nothing dishonourable in yielding to the Will of the Majority, however much we may feel in a particular instance that the Will is being exercised wrongly. That indeed has always appeared to us one of the greatest advantages of true Democracy. Even if incidentally it may act harshly or tyrannically, there
is no dishonour in obeying it ;—because it is the ultimate power. After all, though an expression of the Will of the Majority does not alter facts, it at any rate does establish the supreme circumstance as to What the mails of the People in a particular case desire to have accomplished. When all is said and done, the invoking of the Will of the Majority is the only just and the only final way of settling any political or social question, whether in big things or in small things. If there are eight people in a railway carriage and there is a question whether the heating system shall be turned on or turned off, the only way of arriving at a settlement, as settlement there must be, is to abide by the decision of the greater number. So in the last resort in a State we must take the Will of the Majority. It sounds well enough in theory to say that we ought to take the view of the most enlightened and best educated people, but how are you to ascertain who these are ? Besides, History shows that the intelligentsia make quite as many mistakes as the uninstructed.
But the more absolute is our willingness to yield, and yield with a good grace, to the Will of the Majority, the more determined are we that it shall be the Will of the Majority, and not the will of people who pretend to be the Majority. We will bow the knee to the true and legitimate Sovereign but not to a usurper. It is for this reason that we have always desired to see installed in the Constitution a method of ascertaining the absolute Will of the Majority on any matter of great importance through a Poll of the People. The Poll of the People was always needful, as those tree Democrats, the buff-coated soldiers of the Commonwealth, felt, but it is now more than ever a neces- sity. Indeed, until we have installed the Referendum is our Constitution, not of course in regard to every paltry matter or administrative detail, but in regard to great changes, we cannot call ourselves a true Democracy.
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