This is not a plea for the conscientious objector but for democracy. Newman said that if the Pope spoke against conscience, “he would commit a suicidal act. He would be cutting the ground from under his feet.” The authority of the Pope is not shaken because he concedes to conscience the liberty of dissent; rather it is confirmed. Even more so do the stability and growth of democracy depend upon its recognition of the inviolability of the individual conscience; for democracy cannot live except its roots be deep struck in the moral nature of man. The ultimate battleground of democracy is in men’s hearts; and its appeal must at last ever be to men’s consciences. But the appeal to conscience has no meaning unless conscience be free; and when democracy constrains men’s consciences it is writing off its own spiritual charter. Even in time of war it is safer for democracy to let a hundred shirkers go scot-free rather than run the risk of penalising an honest conscience. For by its affirmation of the sovereignty of conscience it reinforces the consciences of all its members and wins the deeper loyalty of those who are constrained to dissent from its policy on particular issues. IV The growth of the democratic ideal is bound up with the acceptance of the freedom of the mind in all its consequences—even at the risk of some disorder; and the difficulty which political democracy is apt even in normal times to find in conforming to this view is due to the fact that it has not yet perceived the logic of its own first principles. This in its turn is at least to some extent to be accounted for by the survival in democracies of mediæval conceptions of authority. We do not need to take into account those doctrines of authority which are begotten of the divine right of kings and are now clearly at their last gasp. The divine right of kings is, however, assumed to have fallen upon democratic governments; and though they may not exercise authority for the same ends as an autocrat of the old style, yet they conceive of it as operating in the same way. Theoretically, authority in democracies is exercised in the interests of social justice; but we still suppose that the discipline of social justice must be imposed upon men from without.