Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/139

* DEMOCLES. 109 DEMOCRACY. some written orations, since Dionysius of Hali- carnassus ascribes to him an oration which luid been attributeil to Dinarchus. Dionysius and t5Uii!;i~ call him Dcmoelides. DEMOCKACY (Gk. d-nfWKpaTia, dCmohralia, government ui the people, from SijiiOi, dvmos, people + Kpareli, krateiit, to rule). A term of wide and variable signification, comprehend- ing such diverse but related conceptions as: (1) a society based on equality; (2) a State in which the actual power of government is lodged in the mass of the people; and (3) a form of governmental organization in which the au- thority of the State is directly administered by the people or their chosen representatives. The term is also i)flen employed indetinitely to de- scribe all of these taken together — in which ease it may be defined as a form of society in which the social organization, the energy of the State, and the powers of government are directed and controlled by the mass of the people: and some- times more vagiiely to characterize the tendency of the progiessive nations during the last two hundred years toward the' realization of such a social and political organization. It is in the first, or social sense, that the term democracy is most frequently employed by Continental and especially French writers, and in the third or governmental sense by the Greek |)hilos(i])hers, while among English and American political writers, from Benthani to Lecky and Woodrow Wilson, the tendency has been to limit its use to the actual exercise of political power by the people, and therefore as coextensive in meaning with popular government. A democratic society is one in which i)rivilege, whether based on birth, on wealth, or on public service, has been abolished, and a substantial equality of legal rights and obligations and of social and industrial opportunity established. The existence of a caste, whether hereditary or intellectual, or of social classes is incompatible with a democratic organization of society, which is likewise menaced by the growth of centraliza- tion of wealth on the one hand, and, on the other, by the existence of extreme poverty and the growth of dependent classes. It can there- fore, under the present industrial system, be only imperfectly realized in a state of civilization, its best illustrations being found in primitive or simple comnninities, like certain of the Swiss cantons and the frontier settlements in the west- em portions of the United States and Canada. Democracy as a social principle rest.s upon the doc- trine of the essential equality of all men and of their equal worthiness — a notion derived mediate- ly from the Christian conception of the equality of all men before God, but owing its transla- tion from religion to society and politics chiefly to the influence exercised by the writings of Jean- Jacques Rousseau. In the form which he gave to it. and in which it claims our allegiance, the doctrine and the practice of it are wholly mod- em. Certainly there was no social equality in the 'state of nature.' in which Rousseau imag- ined himself to have found it, and the so-called democracies of the ancient world were anything but democratic in sentiment or in social struc- ture. The triumph of the principle in the modern world has been checked by the unexpected per- sistence of the military spirit and the revival of militarism in Europe during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and by the wonderful in- dustrial expansion of the same period, with the consequent increase and unequal distribution of wealth, in both Europe and America, A government democratic or ])opular in form is a republic — that is, a government in which the administration of the affairs of the State is com- mitted to the people, to be exercised by them either directly in popular assemblies, like those of the Athenian democracy, or indirectly through representatives chosen by them, as in the repub- lics of the modern world. Of this it may be ob- served, first, that the pure or direct form of democratic government, at which the criticisms of Greek political writers were directed, has never been completely realized, and cannot be completely realized in practice. Certain of the functions of government nuist always be dele- gated. If the legislative power be exeicised by the whole body of citizens, and the judicial power by large bodies of citizens chosen by lot or acting in turn, the executive power must always in fact be committed for longer or shorter periods to chosen representatives of the popular will. In tl>e second place, even in this limited form, the direct form of democratic government is pos- sible only in small and compact States, like the smaller Swiss cantons and the city States of an- tiquity; and even in these it has usually been found to he oi)erative only on the umlemocratie principle of rigidly limiting the number of citi- zens entitled to participate in the government. The town-meeting plan of government cannot be extended to the great aggregates of people which constitute modern States. In the third place, it is to be observed that, though the democratic State tends to act through repvd)lican forms, a representative republic is not necessarily demo- cratic either in spirit or in its actual operation. A government republican in form may. like that of France, be essentially bureaucratic in struc- ture and effect; or be, like that of most of the Spanish-American States, a militarj^ tyranny; or be, like that of Mexico, a virtual despotism. No one of these can properly be termed a democracy, though that designation would not be denied to England, which is a monarchy in form, or to Can- ada, which is a subordinate part of an empire. It would seem, therefore, that the term democracy is not properly used to describe the external form of government, but rather a type of political society in which the essential power of the State is -wielded by the mass of the people. As thus understood, the true antithesis of democracy is not monarchy or oligarchy, but ab- solutism, i.e. dominion exercised over the mass of the people by an individual or a group of indi- viduals, however constituted, not responsible to the people nor bound by law or custom to consult their wishes. Democracy, on the other hand, is ])opular government — government actually di- rected and controlled by the people, under what- ever constitutional forms. The terms mon;nchy, oligarchy, and republic properly descrilie the form, and not the essential character of a govern- ment. A democracy may exist under both of these forms. A limited monarchy, like that of England, under which the power of the State is actually exercised by the people through their chosen representatives, may be more truly demo- cratic than a republic, like the recent government of the Transvaal, in which the actual power ia