I am away this week, but thought it a good opportunity to air a question that has been worrying me for some time, ever since I noticed that the old British Colony of Hong Kong was - by comparison with all its surroundings - refreshingly free, but not really very democratic.

And my interest was sharpened by the recent news from the Kingdom of Bhutan, which seemed to show that the people of that beautiful, largely unspoiled country are not terribly interested in their King's plan to turn them into a parliamentary democracy. Not to mention recent developments in Iraq, where democracy has led to national breakdown and civil war, or to several other Arab countries - including Egypt and Syria, where 'elections' held for the sake of form, merely confirm the power of ruthless governing elites.

And we have to ask ourselves whether we in the Europeanised parts of the world would actually cheer very loudly if democracy did triumph in the Arab world, where Islamist parties of the 'Muslim Brotherhood' type would be the most likely to win. The 'West' certainly wasn't wild about democracy in Algeria, when it threatened to bring an Islamist government to power. As for Iran, the middle class there would certainly be very pro-Western. But could it get a parliamentary majority against Islamic zealotry?

But that's only part of the problem. We like to preach democracy to others. How much are we really attached to the rule of the people ourselves?

I don't think we are, very. The governing elites of the 'democracies' have built elaborate defences against true democracy, which they are afraid of, often with reason. In the USA, there is of course the Supreme Court, America's liberal House of Lords, which is in charge of social and moral legislation and has a very sketchy relationship with the ballot box. There are also the many one-party cities, where there is no serious chance of a change of local government, and the bosses have a lot of influence over how the national vote goes in their state.

The original plan of Washington DC was designed to make the capital easy to defend against mobs (the same, interestingly, is true of 19th century Moscow and 19th century Paris). The US capital - and Capitol - were sited in Washington, miles from anywhere to begin with, so as to keep it safe from the dangerous mob of Philadelphia. In Germany, all the political parties agree about everything important, and often have 'Grand Coalitions' which stifle dissent so German voters - for instance - never had a chance to pronounce on the plan to abolish the Deutsche Mark and join the Euro. This was unpopular with Germans, but popular with their elite. Guess who won?

But in Britain the barriers against democracy are even more elaborate. Left-wingers like to pretend, absurdly, that the problem is the monarchy, an almost wholly powerless and vestigial thing which would certainly destroy itself if it ever positively blocked the action of an elected government. It's true that, as Parliament becomes more and more lifeless, a quick-witted and cunning monarch might be able to regain some of the throne's lost power. But the obstacles to democracy come from other places - the unelected Presidency that is growing in Downing Street, the decree-issuing European Commission and the mighty European Court of Justice in Luxembourg - and its cousin, the Human Wrongs court in Strasbourg. Increasingly, the United Nations and its various Charters and declarations restrict what we believe we can do. Service chiefs are deeply worried by War Crimes law, and politicians ought to be. Yet there was no such law before 1945, in reality.

But in many ways the greatest obstacles to the power of the voters are the political parties, which have become entrenched corporations, dedicated to keeping themselves alive, and relishing the chance - handed to them by the EU and by devolution - to introduce horrible list systems which give them even more of a veto over who sits in legislatures than they had before. How long before the list system comes to Westminster? Not long, I think. I've been into this in my examination of the Useless Tories, so I won't go on at length about it here.

How much does it matter? I'm torn. I'm not convinced at all that a half-informed electorate are the right people to take great national choices. In 1975, they were deceived into voting to stay in the Common Market, and in 1997 they were deceived into voting for New Labour. Perhaps worst of all. in October 1933, in a by-election in East Fulham, London, they voted for a Labour 'peace' candidate who opposed rearmament. Remember, this was months after Hitler had come to power in Berlin, and his warlike intentions were quite obvious. Yet the pro-rearmament Tory Duff Cooper had to take refuge in Fulham town hall, to protect himself from the rage of a pro-'peace' mob. His offence was to suggest that the Royal Air Force should be expanded.

If you have seen David Lean's enjoyable and intelligent 1944 film of Noel Coward's 'This Happy Breed', you will probably have noticed the camera linger on Tory election posters from the 1935 general election, not long after the Fulham result had frightened the Tory leadership. They show the Conservative leader, Stanley Baldwin, looking avuncular and reassuring, above the words "I will never stand for a policy of great armaments'. Thus, for fear of 'democracy', the Tories stood in 1935 on a policy which amounted to national suicide. Their failure to rearm in time changed the course of history. Not many people know, for instance, that the lack of a single aircraft carrier to protect the great ships 'Prince of Wales' and 'Repulse' almost certainly cost us Singapore, and therefore the whole empire. As for the Battle of Britain, it was the most close-run thing since Waterloo. The planes, and the pilots, were only just adequate. Readers of this blog should by now also know the shameful story of the popular (and Royal) welcome for Neville Chamberlain when he came back from shameful defeat at Munich in 1938, and pretended it was a triumph. Indeed, worse, he believed it was.

On the other hand, there's no doubt that an elite, however benevolent and intelligent, can become wholly cut off from the true conditions and concerns of the people. I think the absurd complacency of the government about crime and disorder is an example of this, as is the political class's inability to grasp just how bad the state schools are.

Democratic mechanisms are an important way of ensuring that these complaints are heard - provided the parties are open to new ideas and prepared to transmit them upwards. But the whole development of spin doctoring has been designed to make sure that the people are persuaded to want what the parties plan to do anyway, or are distracted by 'manipulative populism' - the pretence of decisive action on such things as crime, while the real liberal agenda carries on in the background, unobserved. I am sure that comprehensive schooling, by depriving many people in the middle levels of society of a proper historical and political education, has made manipulation easier.

The real danger, and the real problem, is this. Democracy - in a world where terrorism is frequent and crime and disorder are serious - can easily become the deadly enemy of freedom and justice. Politicians such as Charles Clarke (who actually ought to know better, since he is an intelligent and knowledgeable person) and John Reid (who is what he looks like) do not hesitate to use the fear of crime, and of terror, to scare the population into accepting the end of Habeas Corpus and the creation of an arbitrary state not seen in this country since the 17th century. It is frightening to see how successful they are.

People go on about how our forebears 'fought' for democracy, and I have to say I see little evidence of that. Politicians have been pretty willing to hand over the vote once they realised how easy it was to manipulate people. But our ancestors certainly fought for liberty under the law. Not far from where I live is the memorial to John Hampden, whose stand against King Charles I was genuinely heroic, and helped secure liberty in this country. Not long afterwards, he died in battle for his beliefs. Yet most people nowadays haven't even heard of him.

The whole long story of the struggle for free speech and a free press, for jury trial and Habeas Corpus, for the Right to Bear Arms (yes, we have it) for protection against the billeting of soldiers or searches of our houses, is a very inspiring and touching one, involving many acts of determined bravery by plain, dutiful people. Macaulay's history of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which a courageous jury saved us from despotism - is as thrilling and instructive now as it was when it was written. The politicians of the time were, in most cases, as cowardly and devious as those of today. But the cores of the English people were wedded to liberty and national independence (which cannot be separated).

The victory of liberty in 1688 would probably not have been possible without the tragic sacrifice, a few years before, of many honest English lives at the Battle of Sedgemoor, and the barbarous repressions visited on the survivors.

There's a still-enjoyable fictional account of this half-forgotten event in Arthur Conan Doyle's historical novel 'Micah Clarke', which describes with honesty and humour the kind of men who we used to be. None of these people was fighting for democracy, or would have much fancied the idea had it been suggested to them. I suspect the founding fathers of the USA would have felt much the same. It was liberty they were after. And they achieved it. We, their inheritors, now have the more complicated task of making sure we hand on this wonderful legacy to our children, undamaged. If we are to do so, I think we would be wise to see democracy as a mixed blessing to be treated with caution, not as a glorious end in itself. Freedom under the law is the thing we should aim for above all.