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Forms of Government 473means yet discovered of preventing the State executive from suppressingthe liberties of the individual and the nation. Nationsemerging into the modern form of society are therefore naturallyand rightly attracted to this instrument of government. But it hasnot yet been found possible to combine Parliamentarism andthe modern trend towards a more democratic democracy; it hasbeen always an instrument either of a modified aristocratic orof a middle-class rule. Besides, its method involves an immensewaste of time and energy and a confused, swaying and uncertainaction that “muddles out” in the end some tolerable result. Thismethod accords ill with the more stringent ideas of efficientgovernment and administration that are now growing in forceand necessity and it might be fatal to efficiency in anythingso complicated as the management of the affairs of the world.Parliamentarism means too, in practice, the rule and often thetyranny of a majority, even of a very small majority, and themodern mind attaches increasing importance to the rights ofminorities. And these rights would be still more important ina World-State where any attempt to override them might easilymean serious discontents and disorders or even convulsions fatalto the whole fabric. Above all, a Parliament of the nations mustnecessarily be a united parliament of free nations and could notwell come into successful being in the present anomalous andchaotic distribution of power in the world. The Asiatic problemalone, if still left unsolved, would be a fatal obstacle and it isnot alone; the inequalities and anomalies are all-pervasive andwithout number.A more feasible form would be a supreme council of thefree and imperial nations of the existing world-system, but thisalso has its difficulties. It could only be workable at first ifit amounted in fact to an oligarchy of a few strong imperialnations whose voice and volume would prevail at every pointover that of the more numerous but smaller non-imperialisticcommonwealths and it could only endure by a progressive and,if possible, a peaceful evolution from this sort of oligarchy ofactual power to a more just and ideal system in which the imperialisticidea would dissolve and the great empires merge their