GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
employees, every charity school or workhouse master who
has bullied and starved the wretches whom indigence has
placed in his power, illustrates the same truth. Squeers
and Bumble, Mr. Murdstonc and Mr. Brocklbhurst,
have their counterparts by the thousand, and the sum of
human misery which has resulted ftom their exercise of
and absolute
power is past telling. "Power always corrupts
power absolutely corrupts. All great men are bad," wrote
Lord Acton. Lord Acton was surveying men's record
in the past. Yet there is no reason to suppose that it is
different in the present, or that the same causes are failing
to produce the same results, merely because they happen
to operate in the twentieth century.
Nor is it necessary for the holder of power to be evilly
disposed; he need not be, even unconsciously, a sadist
to make those who are subject to him miserable. On the
contrary, he may be filled with the best intentions. He
may be a moral reformer anxious to make men good in
this world, or a religious enthusiast intent on saving their
souls in the next. Me may believe in what is essentially
harmlessin temperance, for example, or vegetarianism,
or the virtue of wholemeal bread. Yet his possession of
unchecked power will transform his individually harmless
belief into a public menace. He will misjudge men's
desires, misunderstand their purposes, flout their wishes.
He will make what he believes to be the best possible
laws and hold up his hands in horror at men's ingratitude
in repudiating them. In a word, with the best intentions
in the world, he will make men miserable simply because
he cannot put himself in their place.
The principle which I have cited as the central principle
of democracy, the principle that "it is only the wearer
who knows where the shoe pinches", here receives a new
application. We must not give men irresponsible power,
not only because it corrupts them and they abuse it, but
also because they do not experience the effects of their
use of it; they do not, in other words, have to live under
the laws they make. It follows, first, that in the last resort