We laugh at the divine right of kings, but we could not accept self-government without bestowing on it an element of divinity. We have the divine right of Public Opinion. We can hardly print these words without the reverence of capital letters. The founders of modern democracy knew there could be no government without a miraculous quality. Formerly one mere man by virtue of ruling became something divine. The miracle grew difficult to swallow. You could regard this one man and see that he was a fool and had too many mistresses. He was the least divine-looking thing that could be imagined. Very well then, put the divine quality into something remote. All men by virtue of ruling themselves became divine. An immense inertia develops between theoretical self-government and the practical reluctance of humanity to be governed by anything short of the heavenly hosts. I don't know whether this reluctance springs from racial modesty, the feeling that man is not good enough to govern himself, or from racial egotism, the belief that nothing is too good to govern him; but it is a great reality. The little men at Washington are will-less in the conflict. To overcome this inertia, minorities whose interests cannot wait upon the slow benevolent processes of determinism or upon the divine rightness of public opinion, form to prod the constitutional organs of government into action. Mr. Gray Silver, the silk smoother, and Mr. Wayne B. Wheeler, the Puritan fanatic, are both just as much parts of the government as is Mr. Harding. So, too, is every one of the hundred and more lobbies which issue publicity at Washington. We recognize this plurality of our institutions in our common speech. We refer habitually to the "invisible government," to "government by business," to "party government," to "government by public opinion." We have little but inertia, except as outside pressure is applied to it. The little men at Washington live in all this confusion of an excessively plural government. They are pushed hither and yon by all these forces, organized and unorganized, mental and physical, real and imaginary, that inhibit and impel self-government. They lean heavily upon parties only to find parties bending beneath their weight. They yield to blocs and lobbies. They watch publicity and put out their own publicity to counteract it. Like the ministers of crowned fools, they gull the present embodiment of divine right and cringe before it. They are everything but the effective realization of a democratic will. All this sounds as if I were getting far from my happy ending, and you begin to see me asking the old question, "Is democracy a failure?" But no, it is too soon to ask it. Wait a thousand years until democracy has had a real chance. A revolution--no really optimistic prognosis can be written which does not have the world revolution in it--a revolution will have to take place in men's minds before this is a democracy.