For the real meaning of democratic government is the equal weighing of individual claims to happiness by social institutions. A society built upon economic inequality cannot attempt that sort of measure. Consciously or unconsciously, it starts from the assumption that there is a greater right in some claims than in others. It cannot be said that response to claims is made in terms of justice. The nature of economic inequality is a compulsion to respond to effective demand, and this pays no regard to science on the one hand, or to need upon the other. It thinks only of the presence of purchasing power and not of its connotation in terms of social purpose. The whole productive scheme is thereby tilted to the favour of those who possess the power to make their wants effective. There is cake for some before there is bread for all. The palace neighbours the slum. And those who find that their wants do not secure attention are, inevitably, tempted to an examination of the moral foundations of such a society. Their interest drives them to demand its reconstruction in terms of those wants. Liberty means, in such a context, the power continuously to exercise initiative in social reconstruction. The whole ethos which surrounds their effort is that of equality. They search for freedom for no other end but this. I do not need to remind you that most observers who have sought to estimate the significance of the democratic movement have seen that equality is the key to its understanding. That was the case with Tocqueville; it was the case with John Stuart Mill; and, in a famous lecture which reads now as though it was the utterance of a prophet,[46] it was the case, also, with Matthew Arnold. Broadly, their insight converged towards a recognition of three important things. They realized, first, that in any society where power is gravely unequal, the character and intelligence of those at the base is unnaturally depressed. The community loses by this in two ways. The energy and capacity of which it might make use are not released for action; and the concentration of effective power in a few hands means that the wishes, opinions, needs, of the majority do not receive sufficient consideration. An aristocracy, whether of birth, or creed, or wealth, always suffers from self-sufficiency. It is inaccessible to ideals which originate from without itself. It tends to think them unimportant if they are urged tactfully, and dangerous if they are urged with vigour. It is so accustomed to the idea of its own superiority, that it is resentful of considerations which inquire into the validity of that assumption. It may be generous, charitable, kind; but the surrounding principle of those qualities is always their exercise as of grace and not in justice. An aristocracy, in a word, is the prisoner of its own power, and that the most completely when men begin to question its authority. It does not know how to act wisely at the very moment when it most requires wise action.