"Of all the forces," he says, "which were at work for the
destruction of the prosperity of the Roman world, none is more
deserving of the careful study of an English statesman than the
grain-largesses to the populace of Rome.... Will the great
Democracies of the twentieth century resist the temptation to use
political power as a means of material self-enrichment?"

Possibly Mr. Hodgkin is right. The manner in which the leaders of the
Paris Commune dealt with the rights of property during their disastrous,
but fortunately very brief, period of office in 1871, serves as a
warning of what, in an extreme case, may be expected of despotic
democracy in its most aggravated form. Moreover, misgovernment, and the
fiscal oppression which is the almost necessary accompaniment of
militarism dominant over a poverty-stricken population, have latterly
developed on the continent of Europe, and more especially in Italy, a
school of action--for anarchism can scarcely be dignified by the name of
a school of thought--which regards human life as scarcely more sacred
than property. It may be that some lower depth has yet to be reached,
although it is almost inconceivable that such should be the case.
Anarchy takes us past the stage of any defined political or social
programme. It would appear, so far as can at present be judged, to
embody the last despairing cry of ultra-democracy "Furens."

It is permissible to hope that our national sobriety, coupled with the
inherited traditions derived from centuries of free government, will
save us from such extreme manifestations of democratic tyranny as those
to which allusion has been made above. The special danger in England
would appear rather to arise from the probability of gradual dry rot,
due to prolonged offence against the infallible and relentless laws of
economic science. Both British employers of labour and British workmen