Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/67

Rh  are particularly favorable to knowledge and the arts, as both grow under patronage.

It is necessary lo distinguish, however, between a political and a merely social aristocracy. These remarks apply chiefly to the former, which alone has any connexion with government. The term aristocracy, in fact, applies properly to no other, though vulgar use has perverted its signification to all nobles, and even to the gentry of democracies.

ADVANTAGES OF A DEMOCRACY.

The principal advantage of a democracy, is a general elevation in the character of the people. If few are raised to a very great height, few are depressed very low. As a consequence, the average of society is much more respectable than under any other form of government. The vulgar charge that the tendency of democracies is to levelling, meaning to drag all down to the level of the lowest, is singularly untrue, its real tendency being to elevate the depressed to a condition not unworthy of their manhood. In the absence of privileged orders, entails and distinctions, devised permanently to separate men into social castes, it is true none are great but those who become so by their acts, but, confining the remark to the upper classes of society, it would be much more true to say that democracy refuses to lend itself to unnatural and arbitrary distinctions, than to accuse it of a tendency to level those who have a just claim to be elevated. A denial of a favor, is not an invasion of a right.