Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/601

Rh popular support, with the result of increasing popular power. The king's jealousy of the aristocracy has induced him to enlist the sympathies of the people—sometimes serfs, but more frequently citizens—and therefore to favor them; or, otherwise, the people have profited by alliance with the aristocracy in resisting royal tyrannies and exactions. Doubtless, the facts admit of being thus presented. With conflict there habitually goes the desire for allies; and throughout mediaeval Europe, while the struggles between monarchs and barons were chronic, the support of the towns was important. Germany, France, Spain, Hungary, furnish illustrations.

But it is an error to regard occurrences of these kinds as causes of popular power. They are to be regarded rather as the conditions under which the causes take effect. These incidental weakenings of preexisting institutions do but furnish opportunities for the action of the pent-up force which is ready to work political changes. Three factors in this force may be distinguished—the relative mass of those composing the industrial communities as distinguished from those embodied in the older forms of organization; the permanent sentiments and ideas produced in them by their mode of life; and the temporary emotions excited by special acts of oppression or by distress. Let us observe the coöperation of these.

Two instances, occurring first in order of time, are furnished by the Athenian democracy. The condition which preceded the Solonian legislation was one of violent dissension among political factions; and there was also "a general mutiny of the poorer population against the rich, resulting from misery combined with oppression." The more extensive diffusion of power, effected by the revolution which Kleisthenes brought about, occurred under kindred circumstances. The relatively-detached population of immigrant traders had so greatly increased between the time of Solon and that of Kleisthenes that the four original tribes forming the population of Attica had to be replaced by ten. And then this augmented mass, largely composed of men not under clan-discipline, and therefore less easily restrained by the ruling classes, forced itself into predominance at a time when the ruling classes were divided. Though it is said that Kleisthenes, "being vanquished in a party contest with his rival, took the people into partnership"—though the change is represented as being one thus personally initiated yet, in the absence of that voluminous popular will which had long been growing, the political reorganization could not have been made, or, if made, could not have been maintained. The remark which Grote quotes from Aristotle, that "seditions are generated by great causes, but out of small incidents," if altered slightly by writing "political changes" instead of "seditions," fully applies. For clearly, once having been enabled to assert itself, this popular power could not be forthwith excluded. Kleisthenes could not under such circumstances have imposed on so large a mass of men arrangements at