Page:History of Freedom.djvu/137

 MAY'S DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE 93

the ruling fact in French politics. It created the" saviour of society," and the Commune; and it still entangles the footsteps of the Republic. It is the only shape in which democracy has found an entrance into Germany. Liberty has lost its spell; and democracy maintains itself by the promise of substantial gifts to the masses of the people. Since the Revolution of July and the Presidency of Jackson gave the impulse which has made democracy preponderate, the ablest political writers, Tocqueville, Calhoun, Mill, and Laboulaye, have drawn, in the name of freedom, a formidable indictment against it. They have shown democracy without respect for the past or care for the future, regardless of public faith and of national honour, extravagant and inconstant, jealous of talent and of knowledge, indifferent to justice but servile towards opinion, incapable of organisation, impatient of authority, averse from obedience, hostile to religion and to established la\v. Evidence indeed abounds, even if the true cause be not proved. But it is not to these symptoms that we must impute the permanent danger and the irrepressible conflict. As much might be made good against monarchy, and an unsympathising reasoner might in the same way argue that religion is intolerant, that conscience makes co\vards, that piety rejoices in fraud. Recent experience has added little to the observa- tions of those who witnessed the decline after Pericles, of Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, and of the writer \vhose brilliant tract against the Athenian Republic is printed among the works of Xenophon. The manifest, the avo\ved difficulty is that democracy, no less than monarchy or aristocracy, sacrifices everything to maintain itself, and strives, \vith an energy and a plausibility that kings and nobles cannot attain, to override representation, to annul all the forces of resistance and deviation, and to secure, by Plébiscite, Referendum, or Caucus, free play for the will of the majority. The true democratic principle, that none shall have power over the people, is taken to mean that none shall be able to restrain or to elude its power. The true democratic principle, that the

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