The history of the democratic spirit, from its first inception to the
present day, is that of a ceaseless struggle with special privilege. The
principle of caste, in its numerous manifestations, is constantly at
war with the right's of man. After centuries of incessant conflict, the
advance of democracy is beyond all question; and its ultimate triumph
can be denied only by those who hold that progress is destined to cease
and civilization to decay. It has become evident that what is democratic
is good and beneficial to mankind, that what is undemocratic is evil and
harmful to the human race. Kings, kaisers, emperors, czars, hereditary
aristocracies and oligarchies of every kind, however necessary or useful
factors they may have been in certain early stages of the transition
from barbarism to civilization, are now recognizable as drags on the
chariot wheel of progress. The world has begun to rid itself of
all these anachronisms; and the day of their entire and permanent
disappearance can now be foreseen in the not extremely distant future.
Complete autocracies have practically ceased to exist. Monarchy by
divine right is recognized for the monstrous lie which it always was;
and the few atavistic survivals who continue to mouth that once revered
phrase are abhorred, pitied or despised by all sane men and women. Mixed
governments are the general rule, since the old and exploded fallacies
of personal government yield unwillingly to the march of progress and
justice; but in each case the authority is slowly but surely passing
more and more into the hands of the people; and the hereditary
rulers are becoming mere figureheads or subsidiary agents of popular
government, pending their final disappearance. In our own and a few
other lands, we are happily rid of them long since, and we wish the
same good fortune at an early date to the rest of the nations. The
reactionaries of the different countries vainly declare that democratic
triumph is a sign of degeneracy. On the contrary, where democracy
flourishes, all forms of progress are found to thrive best. Each new
step in the direction of human liberty has been bitterly opposed by the
worshipers of the past. They have poured forth eloquent jeremiads, and
vehemently predicted the collapse of society and the deterioration of
the race, whenever religious liberty, freedom of the press or of
speech and assembly, a republican form of government, the abolition of
hereditary office and titles of nobility, the overthrow of slavery or
any other great forward step was proposed; and in every single instance
the result of the increase of liberty proved so beneficial to the human
race as to give the lie most unequivocally to the false prophets of
evil. Never has autocracy been proved to be superior to democracy in any
single particular of a fundamental nature.