power loses its economic ascendancy it can at least for a time maintain its political rule.
It need scarcely be explained here that it is thus not only the form and nature of political domination which is partly conditioned by the development of armament, but also the form and nature of the prevailing class-struggles.
However, it is not sufficient that all citizens are equally armed and carry their arms in order to safeguard the continued existence of the rule of democracy, for the equal distribution of arms does not exclude the possibility, as the events in Switzerland have proved, that such distribution is abolished by a majority which is becoming a minority, or even by a minority which is organized in a better, more efficient manner. The equal arming of the whole population can only endure and not be done away with when the production of arms can be carried on universally.
In his curious Utopia, "The Coming Race," Bulwer described in an ingenious way the democratizing part which the development of armament can play. He imagines a stage of scientific de-
