I reprobate no form of government merely upon abstract principles.
There may be situations in which the purely democratic form will
become necessary. There may be some (very few, and very particularly
circumstanced) where it would be clearly desirable. This I do not take
to be the case of France, or of any other great country. Until now, we
have seen no examples of considerable democracies. The ancients were
better acquainted with them. Not being wholly unread in the authors, who
had seen the most of those constitutions, and who best understood them,
I cannot help concurring with their opinion, that an absolute democracy,
no more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate
forms of government. They think it rather the corruption and degeneracy,
than the sound constitution of a republic. If I recollect rightly,
Aristotle observes, that a democracy has many striking points of
resemblance with a tyranny. (When I wrote this, I quoted from memory,
after many years had elapsed from my reading the passage. A learned
friend has found it, and it is as follows:--
To ethos to auto, kai ampho despotika ton Beltionon, kai ta psephismata,
osper ekei ta epitagmata kai o demagogos kai o kolax, oi autoi kai
analogoi kai malista ekateroi par ekaterois ischuousin, oi men kolakes
para turannois, oi de demagogoi para tois demois tois toioutois.--
"The ethical character is the same; both exercise despotism over the
better class of citizens; and decrees are in the one, what ordinances
and arrets are in the other: the demagogue too, and the court favourite,
are not unfrequently the same identical men, and always bear a close
analogy; and these have the principal power, each in their respective
forms of government, favourites with the absolute monarch, and
demagogues with a people such as I have described."--Arist. Politic.
lib. iv. cap 4.)
Of this I am certain, that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens
is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority,
whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often
must; and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater
numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost
ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. In such a
popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable
condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince they have the balmy
compassion of mankind to assuage the smart of their wounds; they have
the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under
their sufferings: but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes,
are deprived of all external consolation. They seem deserted by mankind,
overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species. But admitting
democracy not to have that inevitable tendency to party tyranny, which I
suppose it to have, and admitting it to possess as much good in it when
unmixed, as I am sure it possesses when compounded with other forms;
does monarchy, on its part, contain nothing at all to recommend it? I
do not often quote Bolingbroke, nor have his works in general left any
permanent impression on my mind. He is a presumptuous and a superficial
writer. But he has one observation, which, in my opinion, is not
without depth and solidity. He says, that he prefers a monarchy to other
governments, because you can better ingraft any description of republic
on a monarchy, than anything of monarchy upon the republican forms. I
think him perfectly in the right. The fact is so historically; and it
agrees well with the speculation.
I know how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of departed
greatness. By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant of
yesterday is converted into the austere critic of the present hour.
But steady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious a
concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdain
to assume the part of satirists and declaimers. They will judge of human
institutions as they do of human characters. They will sort out the good
from the evil, which is mixed in mortal institutions, as it is in mortal
men.