ON DEMOCRACY. BY J. ARTHUR PARTRIDGE, AUTHOR OF "COALITIONS AND FRONTIERS IN 1860-1," "THE FALSE NATION AND PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO. 1866. This work arose out of considerations suggested by another work, published concurrently herewith, and entitled "The Making of the American Nation, or the Rise and Decline of Oligarchy in the West." The one is a study on the great, and indeed, only precedent of Democracy; its origin, history, qualities, conflicts, and reconstruction. The other work, the present one, is a consideration of the general theory of Democracy, with special reference to the traditions and future of England. ON DEMOCRACY. "If the popular party exceed more in quantity than they are excelled in quality, Democracy must prevail.”—Aristotle. "Every Government is composed of two distinct elements, its nature (or organisation) and its principle (or motive power). Laws ought to be no less relative to the principle than to the nature."-Montesquieu. "European Society is in a state of transition from Feudal to Federal principles. This I conceive to be the sole cause of all the convulsions that have occurred and that are to occur.” -Disraeli. 'Unity will once more be restored, but not through the canon and feudal law, for the new Catholic element was the People.”—Bancroft. "It is the third huge Gate of Barbarism, the monarchical Gate, which is closing at this moment. The nineteenth cen tury hears it rolling on its hinges.”—Hugo. "The History of the world is nothing but the development of the idea of Freedom. Philosophy concerns itself only with the glory of the idea mirroring itself in History and the process of its development. That History is this process of Development and realisation of spirit, is the justification of God in History. "Freedom of a low and limited order is mere caprice. Freedom does not exist as original and natural. Rather must it be first sought out and won; and that by an incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers. Freedom is spirit in its completeness. Society and the State are the very conditions in which Freedom is realised. Reason is the comprehension of the divine work. The strength of a nation lies in the Reason incorporated in it. The conception of God constitutes the general basis of a People's character."— Hegel, "Philosophy of History," p. 38, 40-2-3, &c., Trans. "The only possible purpose of nature, to manifest and maintain Reason."-Fichte, Vocation of Man, p. 197. "It is a work good and prudent to be able to guide one man; of larger extended virtue to order well one house; but to govern a nation piously and justly, which only is to say happily, is for a spirit of the greatest size and divinest mettle. And certainly of no less a mind, nor of less excellence in another way, were they who by writing laid the solid and true foundations of this science, which being of greatest importance to the life of man, yet there is no art that hath been more cankered in her principles, more soiled and slubbered with aphorisming pedantry, than the art of policy; and that most, where a man would think should least be, in Christian commonwealths. They teach not that to govern well, is to train up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that which springs from thence,-magnanimity (take heed of that); and that which is our beginning, regeneration, and happiest end,-likeness to God, which, in one word, we call godliness; and that this is the true flourishing of a land, other things follow as the shadow does the substance: to teach thus were mere pulpitry to them."-Milton. |
