Excerpt from Democracy in England

Criticism is, however, concerned with details. N 0 one challenges the basic assumptions or indeed knows what they are. Democratic theory was formulated for Englishmen by the utilitarian philosophers of the late eighteenth century. We are told that the utilitarian doctrine with its false psychology is dead.1 Dead in this sense of course means, dead in the common-rooms of universities, if the Gallup Poll asked a selected sample of citizens if they agreed that human beings were dominated by a search for happiness and that the aim of government should be the greatest good of the greatest number, ninety-nine out of a hundred would enthusiastically agree. But if these doctrines are wrong, and if each man is not the best judge of his own interests, then there is no basis for believing that majority rule will produce decisions which are either ust or adequate, except some form of the theory of the general will. These theories are, however, also generally rejected, having been found more useful to autocratic than to democratic governments.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.