and the masters were left to sit in their carriages.  Whether this exact thing happened I do not know, but this sort of thing has happened a thousand times.  There has been a whole series of attempts to transplant to the colonies a graduated English society.  But they have always failed at the first step.  The rude classes at the bottom felt that they were equal to or better than the delicate classes at the top; they shifted for themselves, and left the “gentle-folks” to shift for themselves; the base of the elaborate pyramid spread abroad, and the apex tumbled in and perished.  In the early ages of an agricultural colony, whether you have political democracy or not, social democracy you must have, for nature makes it, and not you.  But in time, wealth grows and inequality begins.  A and his children are industrious, and prosper; B and his children are idle, and fail.  If manufactures on a considerable scale are established—­and most young communities strive even by protection to establish them—­the tendency to inequality is intensified.  The capitalist becomes a unit with much, and his labourers a crowd with little.  After generations of education, too, there arise varieties of culture—­there will be an upper thousand, or ten thousand, of highly cultivated people in the midst of a great nation of moderately educated people.  In theory it is desirable that this highest class of wealth and leisure should have an influence far out of proportion to its mere number:  a perfect constitution would find for it a delicate expedient to make its fine thought tell upon the surrounding cruder thought.  But as the world goes, when the whole of the population is as instructed and as intelligent as in the case I am supposing, we need not care much about this.  Great communities have scarcely ever—­never save for transient moments—­been ruled by their highest thought.  And if we can get them ruled by a decent capable thought, we may be well enough contented with our work.  We have done more than could be expected, though not all which could be desired.  At any rate, an isocratic polity—­a polity where every one votes, and where every one votes alike—­is, in a community of sound education and diffused intelligence, a conceivable case of Cabinet government.  It satisfies the essential condition; there is a people able to elect, a Parliament able to choose.

But suppose the mass of the people are not able to elect—­and this is the case with the numerical majority of all but the rarest nations—­how is a Cabinet government to be then possible?  It is only possible in what I may venture to call deferential nations.  It has been thought strange, but there are nations in which the numerous unwiser part wishes to be ruled by the less numerous wiser part.  The numerical majority—­whether by custom or by choice, is immaterial—­ is ready, is eager to delegate its power of choosing its ruler to a certain select minority.  It abdicates in favour of its elite, and consents to obey whoever