and the same wars, destroying the lives of men and undermining their morality.
V.
It is true that the Representative Governments of Western Europe and America—Constitutional Monarchies as well as Republics—have uprooted some of the external abuses practised by the representatives of power, and have made it impossible that the holders of power should be such monsters as were the different Louis, Charleses, Henrys and Johns. (Although in representative Government not only is it possible that power will be seized by cunning, immoral and artful mediocrities, such as various Prime Ministers and Presidents have been, but the construction of those Governments is such, that only that kind of people can obtain power.) It is true that representative Governments have abolished such abuses as the lettres de cachet, have removed restrictions on the press, have stopped religious persecutions and oppressions, have submitted the taxation of the people to discussion by their representatives, have made the actions of the Government public and subject to criticism, and have facilitated the rapid development in those countries of all sorts of technical improvements giving great comfort to the life of rich citizens and great military power to the State. So that the nations which have representative government have doubtless become more powerfully industrially, commercially and in military matters, than despotically governed nations, and the lives of their leisured classes have certainly become more secure, comfortable, agreeable and æsthethic than they used to be. But is the life of the majority of the people in those countries more secure, free or, above all, more reasonable and moral
I think not.
Under the despotic power of one man, the number of persons who come under the corrupting influence of power and live on the labour of others, is limited, and consists of the despot's close
