But the moment we come to cases of any complexity the situation changes. If the negro’s guilt could be established only by inference, the lynchers would have to be convinced of it by some clever advocate. If the lynching itself were a matter of extreme difficulty, the lynchers would require to be commanded by the boldest and shrewdest of their number. If the tax protested against were indirect, if its injurious effects were hard to detect and realise, and if it were capable of being represented as less injurious than any other, men of exceptional {222} activity and exceptional sharpness would be required to rouse the sufferers to a perception of what caused their suffering. In other words, democracy, the many, or the faculties possessed by the many, are incapable of initiation in any complex matter, or of carrying out any course of complex action when initiated; and we may sum up the case by saying that all corporate action in politics is less and less purely democratic in proportion as the questions dealt with are less and less simple. Now, as a matter of fact, in any civilised country the majority of the measures which the Government has to devise and carry out, however simple in appearance, are very far from simple in reality. Even when their details are few, the good or the bad effects of them are certain to depend on a great variety of circumstances, with regard to which ordinary faculties can form no independent judgment; and if ordinary men are to express any judgment on such measures at all which is not put into their mouths by others and then uttered by rote, these measures must be placed before them by talented interpreters and advocates, who will reduce the details to a real or apparent simplicity and invest their alleged results with charm and an air of certainty.† Accordingly, when we approach the {223} question from the point of view of the many, we do nothing but arrive at the same conclusion to which we were brought when we approached it from the point of view of the few. We arrive, that is to say, at the conclusion that, if we mean by government the devising, the passing, and the administration of this and of that measure, the genuine power of the many, even under the most popular constitution, becomes less and less in proportion as the greatness and the civilisation of the country increase. The voice of the many is heard as loudly as ever; but what guides the voice is not the personality that seems to utter it. What guides it is a handful of men, exceptionally active, though not always exceptionally wise. The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.