A Treatise on Parents and Children

And the employee has in him the same fierce impulse to impose his will / without respect for the will of others. Democracy is in practice nothing / but a device for cajoling from him the vote he refuses to arbitrary / authority. He will not vote for Coriolanus; but when an experienced / demagogue comes along and says, "Sir: _you_ are the dictator: the / voice of the people is the voice of God; and I am only your very humble / servant," he says at once, "All right: tell me what to dictate," and / is presently enslaved more effectually with his own silly consent than / Coriolanus would ever have enslaved him without asking his leave. And / the trick by which the demagogue defeats Coriolanus is played on him in / his turn by _his_ inferiors. Everywhere we see the cunning succeeding / in the world by seeking a rich or powerful master and practising on his / lust for subservience. The political adventurer who gets into parliament / by offering himself to the poor voter, not as his representative but as / his will-less soulless "delegate," is himself the dupe of a clever wife / who repudiates Votes for Women, knowing well that whilst the man is / master, the man's mistress will rule. Uriah Heep may be a crawling / creature; but his crawling takes him upstairs.

Thus does the selfishness of the will turn on itself, and obtain by / flattery what it cannot seize by open force. Democracy becomes the / latest trick of tyranny: "womanliness" becomes the latest wile of / prostitution.