The moral ideals of any community, like other things, are apt to be settled by numbers. With the extension of popular government, and the increase of the electorate, this tendency will assert itself more and more. But providing the people are dealt with plainly and frankly, without flattery or deceit--like men and not as if they were greedy children--the moral sense of a democracy will probably be sounder and stronger than that of any other form of State. Even in England, however, there have been lapses, during which the people have not been so treated, and the popular spirit has sunk, owing to mean leadership, into degradation. During the whole of the industrial epoch the idea steadily gained in strength, that those whose battles were fought for them by others, approached more nearly to the type of the perfect citizen than those others who actually fought the battles; that the protected were worthier than the protectors. According to this view the true meaning of 'freedom' was exemption from personal service. The whole duty of the virtuous citizen with regard to the defence of his country began and ended with paying a policeman. With the disappearance of imminent and visible danger, the reprobate qualities of the soldier became speedily a pain and a scandal {409} to godly men. In time of peace he was apt to be sneered at and decried as an idler and a spendthrift, who would not stand well in a moral comparison with those steady fellows, who had remained at home, working hard at their vocations and investing their savings. [Sidenote: NINETEENTH CENTURY NOTIONS] The soldier, moreover, according to Political Economy, was occupied in a non-productive trade, and therefore it was contrary to the principles of that science to waste more money upon him than could be avoided. Also it was prudent not to show too much gratitude to those who had done the fighting, lest they should become presumptuous and formidable. This conception of the relations between the army and the civilian population has been specially marked at several periods in our history--after the Cromwellian wars; after the Marlborough wars; after 1757; but during the half century which followed Waterloo it seemed to have established itself permanently as an article of our political creed.