In this country, democracy is a political article of faith subscribed to by all three parties. It is a political platitude that the whole of the population of a country should bow to the will of the majority. Any attack made on this creed has been purely academic. The ‘rights’ of minorities have been asserted by lukewarm agitation for proportional representation or for the alternative vote, but the mathematical complexities of these methods of voting have left the bulk of the citizens of this country cold. Parliament already possesses three main parties—one with a right and a left wing, capable of splitting into two at any time—besides one representative of the Communists, one of the Prohibitionists, and one or two of the Co-operators. There is no general desire in this country for a multiplicity of parties, on the French model. The Britisher is politically a man of principle. He votes Conservative or Liberal on traditional principle, or Labour on class principle.

In An Enemy of the People Ibsen attempted to preach a sermon from the text ‘the majority is always wrong.’ At first sight his text appears demonstrably true. All the great crimes of the world, all’ the wars, all the executions of the martyrs, have been sanctioned by the majority. History is a record of mass errors of judgment, but its verdict is that the majority is always the tool of an unscrupulous minority. Still, the theory ‘Vox populi, vox Dei’ persists, just as it is popularly supposed that the Press expresses, rather than forms, public opinion.