calde

was in abeyance. For four years we lived under a military despotism, almost as complete as that of the Committee of Public Safety, though less cruel.

Yet no sooner was the war closed than all this passed away. Congress and the Constitution resumed their work; the army vanished; the generals disappeared into civil life, and within five years it became hardly possible to detect any signs of the great struggle. Are there many political systems which have shown greater toughness and elasticity than that? Probably Sir Henry Maine would regard the extension of the suffrage to the negroes after the war as the most reckless and dangerous political experiment that could be imagined. Yet the result has been that though the armed force of the general government was in a few years wholly withdrawn, the two races have lived side by side, with the exception of a few local riots, in perfect peace. The fact that both parties are bidding for the negro vote has compelled them not only to conciliate him, but to try to elevate his condition.1

One of the critics 2 who at first replied to Sir Henry's book thought it necessary to disclaim enthusiasm for popular or any other form of government. There need be no hesitation in confessing such enthusiasm — not, indeed, on the ground imputed by Sir Henry Maine to the advocates of popular government, a supposed accordance with certain inherent rights of man, or with some original and imagined state of nature, but simply because from observation of what it has already accomplished in its brief history, and from what may be held as a fair inference.

1 The efforts of the whites to defeat and suppress the negro vote without attempting an educational qualification, and the increasing outbreaks of violence between the races, may fairly be charged to the weakness of the state governments, as hereinafter portrayed, unable to preserve order and enforce justice between classes. The explanation is fully adequate without resorting to a wholesale condemnation of negro suffrage. 2 E. L. Godkin, in The Nineteenth Century, February, 1886.

from the past to the future, it seems to promise more of happiness for mankind than any other which the world

has known.

In fact, Sir Henry Maine has fallen into certain inconsistencies, which would be surprising in such a writer, were it not apparent how strongly his judgment is influenced by fear and dislike. In stating his reason for the title of his work, he says, on page 67:

What we are witnessing in West European politics is not so much the establishment of a definite system as the continuance, at varying rates, of a process. The states of Europe are now regulated by political institutions answering to the various stages of the transition from the old view that rulers are presumably wise and good, the rightful rulers and guides of the whole population, to the newer view that the ruler is the agent and servant, and the subject the wise and good master, who is obliged to delegate his power to the so-called ruler because, being a multitude, he cannot use it himself.

Now this is clearly the statement of a principle of government, which may be applied to an unlimited rule like that of Louis Napoleon, to a constitutional monarchy like Great Britain, or to a pure republic like the United States, and as a principle it is a legitimate cause of strong feeling or aversion. On page 57, however, all this is changed. There we read that

Democracy is simply and solely a form of government.

And on page 64

On the whole the dispassionate student of politics, who has once got into his head that Democracy is only a form of government, has a right to be somewhat surprised at the feelings which the advent of Democracy excites.

The principle of Democracy is that the people choose their rulers instead of being governed by those as to whom they have no choice. To whom and how they shall delegate power is what makes the form; the discussion of which is the object of the present work.

Again Sir Henry starts with arguing that popular government is unstable and fragile in character, and that Irreconcilables are tending constantly to pull it to pieces;

and yet that a wide suffrage

will in the long run produce a mischievous form of conservatism, and drug society with a potion, compared with which Eldonine would be a salutary draught.

In other words, popular government is to change constantly till it has destroyed existing institutions, and after that it will not change at all; decidedly not a cheerful view of affairs. The most surprising result of this reasoning is to assume

that the process of stamping upon the law the average opinion of an entire community is directed to an identical end with that of the Roman Catholic Church, which attributes a similar sacredness to the average opinions of the Christian world.

In other words, a consensus of opinion arrived at through a free press and free public discussion is identical with that produced by a hierarchy which has steadily, and in a great degree successfully, suppressed free thought and imposed upon mankind the dicta of an infallible pope and a Jesuit college. The peaceful uniformity of life in Great Britain and the United States, and the equality of France, are of the same kind that was brought about by the Inquisition in Spain under Philip II.

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The principle of popular government was thus affirmed less than two centuries ago, and the practical application of that principle outside these islands and their dependencies is not quite a century old.

Per contra.

There had been more than two thousand years of tolerably wellascertained political history, and at its outset Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy were all plainly discernible. The result of a long experience was that some monarchies and some aristocracies had shown

themselves extremely tenacious of life. But the democracies which had arisen and perished seemed to show that this form of government was of rare occurrence in political history, and was characterized by an extreme fragility.

Here, by his own showing, are two wholly distinct things. Popular government is to be judged only by its own experience, and in applying to it the tests of earlier history Sir Henry seems to be as illogical as are, in his view, Rousseau and Bentham. And when he adds, what is perhaps true, that, "of all forms of government Democracy is by far the most difficult," it seems as if a little charity towards partial failures would not be out of place.

Quitting now the ground of abstract and a priori argument, we will inquire what has been the practical result of popular government so far as it can be learned from a century of experience. At the outset it must be repeated, that with those who regard an upper class, limited in numbers but wealthy, cultured, and ornamental, placed securely beyond want and devoted to elegant leisure, as an offset to the unknown and uncared-for millions, who are left to live and perish like the beasts of the field, it is difficult to argue. The British House of Lords is no doubt a dignified and venerable institution, but if the average permanent welfare of the whole population of Great Britain could thereby be raised in even a small fractional degree, it might be permitted to regard the abolition of the House of Lords as a desirable event. Almost all accounts agree that social life among the higher classes. in France before the first revolution was perhaps the most delightful in its charm which the world has ever But if it involved the condition of the remainder of the population, its claim to existence could not, from the present point of view, stand for a moment. Everybody knows Burke's picture of a beautiful, virtuous, and

seen.

innocent queen falling a victim to the mob. Even if we admit this favorable view of her character, she suffered, and with as much justice as a great many other virtuous and innocent women have suffered, for the sins of her race and class. In this discussion we shall have to assume as the objective point "the greatest good of the greatest number," or rather the greatest average welfare of the whole, subject, no doubt, to demonstration of what that greatest good may really be.

Appealing then to history, we will begin with Great Britain. Blackstone, writing in the last century, stated that there were 160 offences liable under the law to capital punishment, and even in the first years of this century petty offences, such as sheep-stealing and the like, were punished with death, while executions were conducted by wholesale, under the most revolting and demoralizing cir

1 And in France that very equality which is by us so impetuously decried, while it has by no means improved (it is said) the upper classes of French society, has undoubtedly given to the lower classes, to the body of the common people, a self-respect, an enlargement of spirit, a consciousness of counting for something in their country's action, which has raised them in the scale of humanity.

To treat men as if they were better is the way to make them better. MATTHEW ARNOLD, “Essay on Equality."

2 Legislators had endeavored to protect property by punishing with death those who stole a sum of money which in their time was considerable, and the penalty was retained when the change in the value of money had made that sum insignificant. . . . Previous to the Revolution the number of capital offences in the statute book is said not to have exceeded 50. During the reign of George II. 63 new ones were added. In 1770 the number was estimated in Parliament at 154, but by Blackstone at 160; and Romilly, in a pamphlet which he wrote in 1786, observed that in the sixteen years since the appearance of Blackstone's "Commentaries" it had considerably increased. . . . 467 persons were executed in London and Middlesex alone in the twelve years from December, 1771, to December, 1783. In 1778 not less than 96 persons were hanged at the Old Bailey. On the other hand, in the great city of Amsterdam, which was about a third of the size of London, Howard found that in the eight years before his arrival only 5 persons had been executed. LECKY, "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," Vol. VI., Chap. XXIII.