only the employee, however patent a hypocrite or incorrigible a slacker,
is hat in hand. But let the most obvious measure of justice be demanded
by the secretary of a Trade Union in terms which omit all expressions
of subservience, and it is with the greatest difficulty that the
cooler-headed can defeat angry motions that the letter be thrown into
the waste paper basket and the committee proceed to the next business.




The Demagogue's Opportunity

And the employee has in him the same fierce impulse to impose his will
without respect for the will of others. Democracy is in practice nothing
but a device for cajoling from him the vote he refuses to arbitrary
authority. He will not vote for Coriolanus; but when an experienced
demagogue comes along and says, "Sir: _you_ are the dictator: the
voice of the people is the voice of God; and I am only your very humble
servant," he says at once, "All right: tell me what to dictate," and
is presently enslaved more effectually with his own silly consent than
Coriolanus would ever have enslaved him without asking his leave. And
the trick by which the demagogue defeats Coriolanus is played on him in
his turn by _his_ inferiors. Everywhere we see the cunning succeeding
in the world by seeking a rich or powerful master and practising on his
lust for subservience. The political adventurer who gets into parliament
by offering himself to the poor voter, not as his representative but as
his will-less soulless "delegate," is himself the dupe of a clever wife
who repudiates Votes for Women, knowing well that whilst the man is
master, the man's mistress will rule. Uriah Heep may be a crawling
creature; but his crawling takes him upstairs.