Yet the inadequate co-ordination of the two ideas may, and indeed does, lead to certain unhappy consequences. In Great Britain, an insufficient attention to equality has led to a too prolonged survival of the idea of a “governing class”; and social prestige still possesses an inordinate influence upon the distribution of political power. In France, on the other hand, an insufficient stress on liberty has tended to make Frenchmen _étatistes_. According to Emile Faguet, they are accustomed to submit to despotism and are eager in turn to practise it. They are liberals only when they are in a minority. In the United States, egalitarianism produces a kind of compulsory uniformitarianism. It is significant that, while in a state of war all nations are intolerant of dissent and free discussion, in the United States where the doctrine of political equality has reached its completest expression, dissent from the common view has been much more harshly treated than in any other belligerent country. The cardinal sin appears to be that of breaking the ranks. Liberty, according to Lord Acton, is “the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom, and opinion;” and if that be true, it does not necessarily follow that democracy is the home of liberty. An egalitarian democracy may indeed become the tomb of liberty. “Democracy,” says the same learned authority, “no less than monarchy or aristocracy sacrifices everything to maintain itself, and strives with an energy and a plausibility that kings and nobles cannot attain to override representation, to annul all the forces of resistance and deviation, and to secure by plebiscite, referendum, or caucus, free play for the will of the majority. The true democratic principle that none shall have power over the people is taken to mean that none shall be able to restrain or to evade its power; the true democratic principle that the people shall not be made to do what it does not like, is taken to mean that it shall not be required to tolerate what it does not like. The true democratic principle that every man’s free-will shall be as unfettered as possible is taken to mean that the free will of the sovereign people shall be fettered in nothing.... Democracy claims to be not only supreme, without authority above, but absolute, without independence below, to be its own master and not a trustee. The old sovereigns of the world are exchanged for a new one, who may be flattered and deceived but whom it is impossible to corrupt or to resist; and to whom must be rendered the things that are Cæsar’s, and also the things that are God’s.” Democracy appeared in order to deliver the individual from a dehumanising subjection; but it may become a dehumanising tyranny itself. A sovereign people may become as harsh and merciless as a sovereign lord.