"Personally, I would rather be governed by a strong bureaucracy—honest, economical and efficient—than be a prey to the sectional fanaticisms of trade unionists, syndicalists, and what not," said Dean Inge, discussing the relative merits of '"Freedom and Disciline" in a paper which he read to the members of the Victoria Institute.
"Tt may be," he continued, "that the spirit of nationalism will end in a victory for State-Socialism everywhere—such a form of government is the logical outcome of fierce and aggressive patriotism in any country—and of the conditions imposed by it upon its neigh-
"What we usually call Socialism is more like individualism run mad. It is anarchic and antinomian, sentimental and secularized a sort of completely _secularized and materialized primitive Christianity.
"T believe that an omnipotent dalis. Government would soon throttle all the life out of the people, and I should dread inexpressibly the perhaps inevitable alliance between the bureaucracy and a priesthood.""
have not lost my faith in religious liberty," he said, "or my horror of priestly domination, the worst of all forms of tyrann; But I have been disillusioned by recent developments of democracy in England, France and Americ:
"Advocates of strong discipline may appeal to the diversities of human endowments. Men are born unequal. Democracy rests on a pure superstition—namely, that a large number of admittedly foolish persons, voting together, will somehow evolve political wisdom. We may say that it is belief in the plenary inspiration of the odd man.
"But in reality the majority of human beings recognize their incompetence either to govern other people or to devise a religion and philosophy for themselves...
"The independence of the ignorant merely liberates him from the experience of the past. Examples may be found in the downright silliness of many religious sects which have sprung up since the Reformation, and in the recrudesconce of superstition, which marks the emancipation of the half educated in a free country."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.