Justice & Law Quote by Auberon Herbert

Herbert’s question is a trap disguised as common sense: once you frame rights as something that can be “exceeded” by headcount, you’ve already smuggled in the idea that rights are negotiable. The line works because it turns majority rule into a kind of moral arithmetic and then refuses to accept the sum. Three doesn’t morally outweigh two; if anything, the very notion is category error. Rights, in Herbert’s libertarian worldview, aren’t votes to be tallied but boundaries to be respected.

The phrasing “absorb” is doing heavy lifting. It suggests a hostile takeover, not a civic process: the majority doesn’t merely decide policy; it metabolizes the minority’s standing until their claims are treated “as if they had never existed.” That’s not a neutral description of democracy, it’s an indictment of democracy without constraints. Herbert is pressing on the soft underbelly of Victorian liberal confidence: the assumption that popular consent automatically cleanses coercion.

Context matters. Writing in an era when the franchise was expanding in Britain, Herbert feared that the state would launder force through ballots, converting “might makes right” into “many make right.” His target isn’t participation; it’s the moral complacency that comes when power is distributed widely enough to feel righteous. The question’s sting is that it denies the comforting story: that domination becomes legitimate when it’s collective. Herbert wants the reader to feel the logical violence of that move, then back away from it.