their underworlds, had to make advances to democracy, and give it some measure of the justice democracy threatened to deal to itself. Without demanding absolutism I do desire a predominant democratic character in our national enterprises, rather than a confused muddle or struggle of interests where nothing really emerges except the egoism of those who struggle. It will be noticed that in all that has preceded I have referred little to action by government, though it is on governments that democracies over the world are now fixing all their hopes. They believe the State is the right agency to bring about reforms and changes in society. And I must here explain why I do not share their hopes. My distrust of the State in economic reform is based on the belief that governments in great nation-states, even representative governments, are not malleable by the general will. They are too easily dominated by the holders of economic power, are, in fact, always dominated by aristocracies with land or by the aristocracies of wealth. It is the hand at the helm guides the ship. The larger the State is the more easily do the holders of economic power gain political power. The theory of representative government held good in practice, I think, so long as parliaments were engaged in formulating general rights, the right, for example, of the individual to think or profess any religion he pleased; his right not to be deprived of liberty or life without open trial by his fellow-citizens. So long as legislatures were affirming or maintaining these rights, which rich and poor equally desired, they were justified. But when legislatures began to intervene in economic matters, in the struggles between rich and poor, between capital and labor, it became at once apparent the holders of economic power had also political power; and that the institution which operated fairly where universal rights were considered did not operate fairly when there was a conflict between particular interests.