that makes it impossible to hurt another's interest without hurting one's
own, or to help one's own interest without promoting equally all other
interests. As to its economic bearings it may be said that it makes the
Golden Rule an automatic principle of government. What we would do for
ourselves we must of necessity do also for others. Until economic
solidarity made it possible to carry out in this sense the idea that
every citizen ought to have a stake in the country, the democratic system
never had a chance to develop its genius."

"It seems," I said, "that your foundation principle of economic equality
which I supposed was mainly suggested and intended in the interest of the
material well-being of the people, is quite as much a principle of
political policy for safeguarding the stability and wise ordering of
government."

"Most assuredly," replied the doctor. "Our economic system is a measure
of statesmanship quite as much as of humanity. You see, the first
condition of efficiency or stability in any government is that the
governing power should have a direct, constant, and supreme interest in
the general welfare--that is, in the prosperity of the whole state as
distinguished from any part of it. It had been the strong point of
monarchy that the king, for selfish reasons as proprietor of the country,
felt this interest. The autocratic form of government, solely on that
account, had always a certain rough sort of efficiency. It had been, on
the other hand, the fatal weakness of democracy, during its negative
phase previous to the great Revolution, that the people, who were the
rulers, had individually only an indirect and sentimental interest in the
state as a whole, or its machinery--their real, main, constant, and
direct interest being concentrated upon their personal fortunes, their
private stakes, distinct from and adverse to the general stake. In