That is the idea of the republic. Now, most modern people have got
into their heads the idea that democracies are dull, drifting things,
a mere black swarm or slide of clerks to their accustomed doom.
In most modern novels and essays it is insisted (by way of contrast)
that a walking gentleman may have ad-ventures as he walks.
It is insisted that an aristocrat can commit crimes, because an aristocrat
always cultivates liberty. But, in truth, a people can have adventures,
as Israel did crawling through the desert to the promised land.
A people can do heroic deeds; a people can commit crimes;
the French people did both in the Revolution; the Irish people
have done both in their much purer and more honourable progress.
But the real answer to this aristocratic argument which seeks to
identify democracy with a drab utilitarianism may be found in action
such as that of the Hungarian Commune--whose name I decline to repeat.
This Commune did just one of those acts that prove that a separate
people has a separate personality; it threw something away.
A man can throw a bank note into the fire. A man can fling a sack
of corn into the river. The bank-note may be burnt as a satisfaction
of some scruple; the corn may be destroyed as a sacrifice to some god.
But whenever there is sacrifice we know there is a single will.
Men may be disputatious and doubtful, may divide by very narrow
majorities in their debate about how to gain wealth.
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