Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/13

 has, and ever has had, very little to do. It is our turbid thought about democracy that prevents our seeing this. The aristocratic and truculent barons did more for the political freedom of Englishmen than was ever done by democracy; a selfish and sensual king did more to gain the individual Englishman his freedom of self-expression in politics. In our own country it is matter of open and notorious fact that a political party whose every sentiment and tendency is aristocratic has been the one to bring about the largest measures of political enfranchisement. Now, surely, one may heartily welcome every enlargement of political liberty, but if one attributes them to a parentage which is not theirs, if one relates them under democracy, the penalty which nature inexorably imposes upon error is sure to follow. If, therefore, in the following pages the author seems occasionally lukewarm toward certain enfranchising measures, I do not understand that he disparages them, but only that he sees—as their advocates, firmly set in the confusion we speak of, cannot see—that their connection with democracy is extremely indistinct and remote. Equality—a social problem, not to be worked out by the mechanics of politics, but appealing wholly to the best self, the best reason and spirit of man,—this is democracy's concern, de-