MAJORITIES NOT INFALLIBLE.
UNDER the heading of “Moral Forces of Majorities,” the Oakland Tribune of January 26 has the following sensible words:— “Politicians talk of a majority as if its decisions were necessarily just and right because they are the conclusions of the greater number, and are apt to fall back upon the ancient fallacy that ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God.’ But was the voice of the people the voice of God when Galileo said that the earth moves around the sun, or when Jenner began to vaccinate, or when Luther nailed his theses upon the church door, or when the mob of Jerusalem cried, ‘Crucify Him!’ The sovereign people may be momentarily as tyrannical as a single despot. Government by a majority is found by experience to be the most reasonable and convenient device for securing peace and order, but it is not because of any virtue inherent in a multitude, or because one man may not be wiser, juster, and better than all the rest. It is a convenient device, because a majority in the long run is amenable to intelligent persuasion, and because a majority can enforce its will against opposition. But there is no divinity that doth hedge in a majority any more than there is a divine power to circumscribe a king; otherwise there could be no such thing as independence of thought, or political reform, which nearly always originates in the mind of a single individual of the minority.”