It reproduced in almost every particular the thoughts and moods distinctive of Christian socialists in England; and this article I will here take as a text.
The writer, exhibiting a candour which many of his secular brethren would do well to imitate, starts with an attack on all existing forms of democracy, which are all, he says, based on a profound and fatal fallacy.

This is the assumption that all men are born equal, from which assumption the practical conclusion is deduced that the best state of society is one which will allow each of these so-called equal beings to work out his own happiness as best he can for himself, with the minimum of interference from his fellow-citizens or from the law.

Now if, says our author, men were born equal in reality, such an individualistic democracy might perhaps work well enough.

But men are not born equal.
The root of the difficulty lies here.

In the economic sense, as in all others, some men are incomparably more able than the great majority of their fellows, and even among the exceptionally able some are much abler than the others.