A democratic element is required in the government of a people, because it is very dangerous that the people should be an enigma. It is necessary to know what it thinks, what it feels, what it suffers, what it desires, what it fears, and what it hopes, and as this can only be learnt from the people itself, it is necessary that it should have a voice which can make itself heard.
This should be done in one way or another, either by a Chamber of its own which should be endowed with great authority, or by the presence in a single chamber of a considerable number of representatives of the people, or by plebiscites constitutionally instituted as necessary for the revision of the constitution and for laws of universal interest, or by the liberty of the press and the liberty of association and public meeting. This would not perhaps be enough, but it would be almost enough. It is necessary that the people should be able to make known its wants, and to influence the decisions of the Government, in a word its voice should be heard and considered.
An aristocratic element is also necessary in a nation and in the government of a nation so that all that admits of precision shall not be smothered by that which is confused; so that what is exact shall not be obscured by what is vague, and so that its firm resolves shall not be shaken by vacillating and incoherent caprice.
Sometimes history itself makes an aristocracy—a fortunate circumstance for a nation! This forms a caste more or less exclusive, it has traditions, traditions more conservative of the laws than the laws themselves, and it embodies in itself all that there is of life, and energy and growth in the soul of a people. Sometimes history has failed to give us an aristocracy or that which history has made has disappeared. It is then that the people ought to draw one out of itself, it is then its duty to appropriate and preserve the high qualities to be found in men who have rendered service to the State or whose ancestors have rendered service to the State, who have special qualifications for each particular office and a moral efficiency for every form of public service.
These qualities constitute the acquired aptitude of an aristocracy for taking a part in the government; these qualities constitute its adaptation to its social environment, and to its special function in our social machinery and organisation. One might say that it is by these qualities that it enters into and becomes part of the organism of which it is the material. As John Stuart Mill has justly remarked, there cannot be an expert, well-managed democracy if democracy will not allow the expert to do the work which he alone can do.
What is wanted then and will always be wanted, even under socialism where, as I pointed out, there will still be an aristocracy though a more numerous one, is a blending of democracy and aristocracy; and here, though he wrote a long time ago, we shall find Aristotle is always right for he studied in a scientific spirit some hundred and fifty different constitutions.
He is an aristocrat, without concealment, as we have seen, but his final conclusions, whether he is speaking of Lacedæmon, which he did not like, or of Carthage, or in general terms, have always been in favour of mixed constitutions as ever the best. "There is," he says, "a manner of combining democracy and aristocracy—which consists in so arranging matters that both the distinguished citizens and the masses have what they want. The right of every man to aspire to magisterial appointments is a democratic principle, but the admission of distinguished citizens only is an aristocratic principle."
This blending of democracy and aristocracy makes a good constitution, but the union must not be one of mere juxtaposition which would serve only to put hostile elements within striking distance. I said a "blending" but the blending must be a real fusion. Our need is that in the management of public business aristocracy and democracy should be combined.
How? Well for many years I have been saying it and I hope I may live for many years longer to say it again. A healthy nation is one in which the aristocracy is "demophil," that is a lover of the people, and where the people is aristocratic in its leanings. Every people where the aristocracy is aristocratic and where the democracy is democratic is a people destined to perish promptly, because it does not understand what a people is, it has not got beyond the stage of knowing what is a class and perhaps not even as far as that.