been abroad in Europe. Intelligent ministers, like Campomanes and
Struensee, and well-meaning monarchs, of whom the most liberal was
Leopold of Tuscany, were trying what could be done to make men happy by
command. Centuries of absolute and intolerant rule had bequeathed abuses
which nothing but the most vigorous use of power could remove. The age
preferred the reign of intellect to the reign of liberty. Turgot, the
ablest and most far-seeing reformer then living, attempted to do for
France what less gifted men were doing with success in Lombardy, and
Tuscany, and Parma. He attempted to employ the royal power for the good
of the people, at the expense of the higher classes. The higher classes
proved too strong for the crown alone; and Louis XVI. abandoned internal
reforms in despair, and turned for compensation to a war with England
for the deliverance of her American Colonies. When the increasing debt
obliged him to seek heroic remedies, and he was again repulsed by the
privileged orders, he appealed at last to the nation. When the
States-General met, the power had already passed to the middle class,
for it was by them alone that the country could be saved. They were
strong enough to triumph by waiting. Neither the Court, nor the nobles,
nor the army, could do anything against them. During the six months from
January 1789 to the fall of the Bastille in July, France travelled as
far as England in the six hundred years between the Earl of Leicester
and Lord Beaconsfield. Ten years after the American alliance, the Rights
of Man, which had been proclaimed at Philadelphia, were repeated at
Versailles. The alliance had borne fruit on both sides of the Atlantic,
and for France, the fruit was the triumph of American ideas over
English. They were more popular, more simple, more effective against
privilege, and, strange to say, more acceptable to the King. The new
French constitution allowed no privileged orders, no parliamentary
ministry, no power of dissolution, and only a suspensive veto. But the
characteristic safeguards of the American Government were rejected:
Federalism, separation of Church and State, the Second Chamber, the
political arbitration of the supreme judicial body. That which weakened
the Executive was taken: that which restrained the Legislature was left.
Checks on the crown abounded; but should the crown be vacant, the powers
that remained would be without a check. The precautions were all in one
direction. Nobody would contemplate the contingency that there might be
no king. The constitution was inspired by a profound disbelief in Louis
XVI. and a pertinacious belief in monarchy. The assembly voted without
debate, by acclamation, a Civil List three times as large as that of
Queen Victoria. When Louis fled, and the throne was actually vacant,
they brought him back to it, preferring the phantom of a king who was a
prisoner to the reality of no king at all.
Next to this misapplication of American examples, which was the fault of
nearly all the leading statesmen, excepting Mounier, Mirabeau, and
Sieyes, the cause of the Revolution was injured by its religious policy.
The most novel and impressive lesson taught by the fathers of the
American Republic was that the people, and not the administration,
should govern. Men in office were salaried agents, by whom the nation
wrought its will. Authority submitted to public opinion, and left to it
not only the control, but the initiative of government. Patience in
waiting for a wind, alacrity in catching it, the dread of exerting
unnecessary influence, characterise the early presidents. Some of the
French politicians shared this view, though with less exaggeration than
Washington. They wished to decentralise the government, and to obtain,
for good or evil, the genuine expression of popular sentiment. Necker
himself, and Buzot, the most thoughtful of the Girondins, dreamed of
federalising France. In the United States there was no current of
opinion, and no combination of forces, to be seriously feared. The
government needed no security against being propelled in a wrong
direction. But the French Revolution was accomplished at the expense of
powerful classes. Besides the nobles, the Assembly, which had been made
supreme by the accession of the clergy, and had been led at first by
popular ecclesiastics, by Sieyes, Talleyrand, Cice, La Luzerne, made an
enemy of the clergy. The prerogative could not be destroyed without
touching the Church. Ecclesiastical patronage had helped to make the
crown absolute. To leave it in the hands of Louis and his ministers was
to renounce the entire policy of the constitution. To disestablish, was
to make it over to the Pope. It was consistent with the democratic
principle to introduce election into the Church. It involved a breach
with Rome; but so, indeed, did the laws of Joseph II., Charles III., and
Leopold. The Pope was not likely to cast away the friendship of France,
if he could help it; and the French clergy were not likely to give
trouble by their attachment to Rome. Therefore, amid the indifference of
many, and against the urgent, and probably sincere, remonstrances of
Robespierre and Marat, the Jansenists, who had a century of persecution
to avenge, carried the Civil Constitution. The coercive measures which
enforced it led to the breach with the King, and the fall of the
monarchy; to the revolt of the provinces, and the fall of liberty. The
Jacobins determined that public opinion should not reign, that the State
should not remain at the mercy of powerful combinations. They held the
representatives of the people under control, by the people itself. They
attributed higher authority to the direct than to the indirect voice of
the democratic oracle. They armed themselves with power to crush every
adverse, every independent force, and especially to put down the
Church, in whose cause the provinces had risen against the capital. They
met the centrifugal federalism of the friends of the Gironde by the most
resolute centralisation. France was governed by Paris; and Paris by its
municipality and its mob. Obeying Rousseau's maxim, that the people
cannot delegate its power, they raised the elementary constituency above
its representatives. As the greatest constituent body, the most numerous
accumulation of primary electors, the largest portion of sovereignty,
was in the people of Paris, they designed that the people of Paris
should rule over France, as the people of Rome, the mob as well as the
senate, had ruled, not ingloriously, over Italy, and over half the
nations that surround the Mediterranean. Although the Jacobins were
scarcely more irreligious than the Abbe Sieyes or Madame Roland,
although Robespierre wanted to force men to believe in God, although
Danton went to confession and Barere was a professing Christian, they
imparted to modern democracy that implacable hatred of religion which
contrasts so strangely with the example of its Puritan prototype.
The deepest cause which made the French Revolution so disastrous to
liberty was its theory of equality. Liberty was the watchword of the
middle class, equality of the lower. It was the lower class that won the
battles of the third estate; that took the Bastille, and made France a
constitutional monarchy; that took the Tuileries, and made France a
Republic. They claimed their reward. The middle class, having cast down
the upper orders with the aid of the lower, instituted a new inequality
and a privilege for itself. By means of a taxpaying qualification it
deprived its confederates of their vote. To those, therefore, who had
accomplished the Revolution, its promise was not fulfilled. Equality did
nothing for them. The opinion, at that time, was almost universal, that
society is founded on an agreement which is voluntary and conditional,
and that the links which bind men to it are terminable, for sufficient
reason, like those which subject them to authority. From these popular
premises the logic of Marat drew his sanguinary conclusions. He told
the famished people that the conditions on which they had consented to
bear their evil lot, and had refrained from violence, had not been kept
to them. It was suicide, it was murder, to submit to starve and to see
one's children starving, by the fault of the rich. The bonds of society
were dissolved by the wrong it inflicted. The state of nature had come
back, in which every man had a right to what he could take. The time had
come for the rich to make way for the poor. With this theory of
equality, liberty was quenched in blood, and Frenchmen became ready to
sacrifice all other things to save life and fortune.
Twenty years after the splendid opportunity that opened in 1789, the
reaction had triumphed everywhere in Europe; ancient constitutions had
perished as well as new; and even England afforded them neither
protection nor sympathy. The liberal, at least the democratic revival,
came from Spain. The Spaniards fought against the French for a king, who
was a prisoner in France. They gave themselves a constitution, and
placed his name at the head of it. They had a monarchy, without a king.
It required to be so contrived that it would work in the absence,
possibly the permanent absence, of the monarch. It became, therefore, a
monarchy only in name, composed, in fact, of democratic forces. The
constitution of 1812 was the attempt of inexperienced men to accomplish
the most difficult task in politics. It was smitten with sterility. For
many years it was the standard of abortive revolutions among the
so-called Latin nations. It promulgated the notion of a king who should
flourish only in name, and should not even discharge the humble function
which Hegel assigns to royalty, of dotting i's for the people.
The overthrow of the Cadiz constitution, in 1823, was the supreme
triumph of the restored monarchy of France. Five years later, under a
wise and liberal minister, the Restoration was advancing fairly on the
constitutional paths, when the incurable distrust of the Liberal party
defeated Martignac, and brought in the ministry of extreme royalists
that ruined the monarchy. In labouring to transfer power from the class
which the Revolution had enfranchised to those which it had overthrown,
Polignac and La Bourdonnaie would gladly have made terms with the
working men. To break the influence of intellect and capital by means of
universal suffrage, was an idea long and zealously advocated by some of
their supporters. They had not foresight or ability to divide their
adversaries, and they were vanquished in 1830 by the united democracy.
The promise of the Revolution of July was to reconcile royalists and
democrats. The King assured Lafayette that he was a republican at heart;
and Lafayette assured France that Louis Philippe was the best of
republics. The shock of the great event was felt in Poland, and Belgium,
and even in England. It gave a direct impulse to democratic movements in
Switzerland.
Swiss democracy had been in abeyance since 1815. The national will had
no organ. The cantons were supreme; and governed as inefficiently as
other governments under the protecting shade of the Holy Alliance. There
was no dispute that Switzerland called for extensive reforms, and no
doubt of the direction they would take. The number of the cantons was
the great obstacle to all improvement. It was useless to have
twenty-five governments in a country equal to one American State, and
inferior in population to one great city. It was impossible that they
should be good governments. A central power was the manifest need of the
country. In the absence of an efficient federal power, seven cantons
formed a separate league for the protection of their own interests.
Whilst democratic ideas were making way in Switzerland, the Papacy was
travelling in the opposite direction, and showing an inflexible
hostility for ideas which are the breath of democratic life. The growing
democracy and the growing Ultramontanism came into collision. The
Sonderbund could aver with truth that there was no safety for its rights
under the Federal Constitution. The others could reply, with equal
truth, that there was no safety for the constitution with the
Sonderbund. In 1847, it came to a war between national sovereignty and
cantonal sovereignty. The Sonderbund was dissolved, and a new Federal
Constitution was adopted, avowedly and ostensibly charged with the duty
of carrying out democracy, and repressing the adverse influence of Rome.
It was a delusive imitation of the American system. The President was
powerless. The Senate was powerless. The Supreme Court was powerless.
The sovereignty of the cantons was undermined, and their power centred
in the House of Representatives. The Constitution of 1848 was a first
step towards the destruction of Federalism. Another and almost a final
step in the direction of centralisation was taken in 1874. The railways,
and the vast interests they created, made the position of the cantonal
governments untenable. The conflict with the Ultramontanes increased the
demand for vigorous action; and the destruction of State Rights in the
American war strengthened the hands of the Centralists. The Constitution
of 1874 is one of the most significant works of modern democracy. It is
the triumph of democratic force over democratic freedom. It overrules
not only the Federal principle, but the representative principle. It
carries important measures away from the Federal Legislature to submit
them to the votes of the entire people, separating decision from
deliberation. The operation is so cumbrous as to be generally
ineffective. But it constitutes a power such as exists, we believe,
under the laws of no other country. A Swiss jurist has frankly expressed
the spirit of the reigning system by saying, that the State is the
appointed conscience of the nation.
The moving force in Switzerland has been democracy relieved of all
constraint, the principle of putting in action the greatest force of the
greatest number. The prosperity of the country has prevented
complications such as arose in France. The ministers of Louis Philippe,
able and enlightened men, believed that they would make the people
prosper if they could have their own way, and could shut out public
opinion. They acted as if the intelligent middle class was destined by
heaven to govern. The upper class had proved its unfitness before 1789;
the lower class, since 1789. Government by professional men, by
manufacturers and scholars, was sure to be safe, and almost sure to be
reasonable and practical. Money became the object of a political
superstition, such as had formerly attached to land, and afterwards
attached to labour. The masses of the people, who had fought against
Marmont, became aware that they had not fought for their own benefit.
They were still governed by their employers.
When the King parted with Lafayette, and it was found that he would not
only reign but govern, the indignation of the republicans found a vent
in street fighting. In 1836, when the horrors of the infernal machine
had armed the crown with ampler powers, and had silenced the republican
party, the term Socialism made its appearance in literature.
Tocqueville, who was writing the philosophic chapters that conclude his
work, failed to discover the power which the new system was destined to
exercise on democracy. Until then, democrats and communists had stood
apart. Although the socialist doctrines were defended by the best
intellects of France, by Thierry, Comte, Chevalier, and Georges Sand,
they excited more attention as a literary curiosity than as the cause of
future revolutions. Towards 1840, in the recesses of secret societies,
republicans and socialists coalesced. Whilst the Liberal leaders,
Lamartine and Barrot, discoursed on the surface concerning reform, Ledru
Rollin and Louis Blanc were quietly digging a grave for the monarchy,
the Liberal party, and the reign of wealth. They worked so well, and the
vanquished republicans recovered so thoroughly, by this coalition, the
influence they had lost by a long series of crimes and follies, that, in
1848, they were able to conquer without fighting. The fruit of their
victory was universal suffrage.
From that time the promises of socialism have supplied the best energy
of democracy. Their coalition has been the ruling fact in French
politics. It created the "saviour of society," and the Commune; and it
still entangles the footsteps of the Republic. It is the only shape in
which democracy has found an entrance into Germany. Liberty has lost its
spell; and democracy maintains itself by the promise of substantial
gifts to the masses of the people.
Since the Revolution of July and the Presidency of Jackson gave the
impulse which has made democracy preponderate, the ablest political
writers, Tocqueville, Calhoun, Mill, and Laboulaye, have drawn, in the
name of freedom, a formidable indictment against it. They have shown
democracy without respect for the past or care for the future,
regardless of public faith and of national honour, extravagant and
inconstant, jealous of talent and of knowledge, indifferent to justice
but servile towards opinion, incapable of organisation, impatient of
authority, averse from obedience, hostile to religion and to established
law. Evidence indeed abounds, even if the true cause be not proved. But
it is not to these symptoms that we must impute the permanent danger and
the irrepressible conflict. As much might be made good against monarchy,
and an unsympathising reasoner might in the same way argue that religion
is intolerant, that conscience makes cowards, that piety rejoices in
fraud. Recent experience has added little to the observations of those
who witnessed the decline after Pericles, of Thucydides, Aristophanes,
Plato, and of the writer whose brilliant tract against the Athenian
Republic is printed among the works of Xenophon. The manifest, the
avowed difficulty is that democracy, no less than monarchy or
aristocracy, sacrifices everything to maintain itself, and strives, with
an energy and a plausibility that kings and nobles cannot attain, to
override representation, to annul all the forces of resistance and
deviation, and to secure, by Plebiscite, Referendum, or Caucus, free
play for the will of the majority. The true democratic principle, that
none shall have power over the people, is taken to mean that none shall
be able to restrain or to elude its power. The true democratic
principle, that the people shall not be made to do what it does not
like, is taken to mean that it shall never be required to tolerate what
it does not like. The true democratic principle, that every man's free
will shall be as unfettered as possible, is taken to mean that the free
will of the collective people shall be fettered in nothing. Religious
toleration, judicial independence, dread of centralisation, jealousy of
State interference, become obstacles to freedom instead of safeguards,
when the centralised force of the State is wielded by the hands of the
people. Democracy claims to be not only supreme, without authority
above, but absolute, without independence below; to be its own master,
not a trustee. The old sovereigns of the world are exchanged for a new
one, who may be flattered and deceived, but whom it is impossible to
corrupt or to resist, and to whom must be rendered the things that are
Caesar's and also the things that are God's. The enemy to be overcome is
no longer the absolutism of the State, but the liberty of the subject.
Nothing is more significant than the relish with which Ferrari, the most
powerful democratic writer since Rousseau, enumerates the merits of
tyrants, and prefers devils to saints in the interest of the community.
For the old notions of civil liberty and of social order did not benefit
the masses of the people. Wealth increased, without relieving their
wants. The progress of knowledge left them in abject ignorance. Religion
flourished, but failed to reach them. Society, whose laws were made by
the upper class alone, announced that the best thing for the poor is not
to be born, and the next best, to die in childhood, and suffered them to
live in misery and crime and pain. As surely as the long reign of the
rich has been employed in promoting the accumulation of wealth, the
advent of the poor to power will be followed by schemes for diffusing
it. Seeing how little was done by the wisdom of former times for
education and public health, for insurance, association, and savings,
for the protection of labour against the law of self-interest, and how
much has been accomplished in this generation, there is reason in the
fixed belief that a great change was needed, and that democracy has not
striven in vain. Liberty, for the mass, is not happiness; and
institutions are not an end but a means. The thing they seek is a force
sufficient to sweep away scruples and the obstacle of rival interests,
and, in some degree, to better their condition. They mean that the
strong hand that heretofore has formed great States, protected
religions, and defended the independence of nations, shall help them by
preserving life, and endowing it for them with some, at least, of the
things men live for. That is the notorious danger of modern democracy.
That is also its purpose and its strength. And against this threatening
power the weapons that struck down other despots do not avail. The
greatest happiness principle positively confirms it. The principle of
equality, besides being as easily applied to property as to power,
opposes the existence of persons or groups of persons exempt from the
common law, and independent of the common will; and the principle, that
authority is a matter of contract, may hold good against kings, but not
against the sovereign people, because a contract implies two parties.
If we have not done more than the ancients to develop and to examine the
disease, we have far surpassed them in studying the remedy. Besides the
French Constitution of the year III., and that of the American
Confederates,--the most remarkable attempts that have been made since
the archonship of Euclides to meet democratic evils with the antidotes
which democracy itself supplies,--our age has been prolific in this
branch of experimental politics.
Many expedients have been tried, that have been evaded or defeated. A
divided executive, which was an important phase in the transformation of
ancient monarchies into republics, and which, through the advocacy of
Condorcet, took root in France, has proved to be weakness itself.
The constitution of 1795, the work of a learned priest, confined the
franchise to those who should know how to read and write; and in 1849
this provision was rejected by men who intended that the ignorant voter
should help them to overturn the Republic. In our time no democracy
could long subsist without educating the masses; and the scheme of
Daunou is simply an indirect encouragement to elementary instruction.
In 1799 Sieyes suggested to Bonaparte the idea of a great Council, whose
function it should be to keep the acts of the Legislature in harmony
with the constitution--a function which the _Nomophylakes_ discharged at
Athens, and the Supreme Court in the United States, and which produced
the Senat Conservateur, one of the favourite implements of Imperialism.
Sieyes meant that his Council should also serve the purpose of a gilded
ostracism, having power to absorb any obnoxious politician, and to
silence him with a thousand a year.
Napoleon the Third's plan of depriving unmarried men of their votes
would have disfranchised the two greatest Conservative classes in
France, the priest and the soldier.
In the American constitution it was intended that the chief of the
executive should be chosen by a body of carefully selected electors. But
since, in 1825, the popular candidate succumbed to one who had only a
minority of votes, it has become the practice to elect the President by
the pledged delegates of universal suffrage.
The exclusion of ministers from Congress has been one of the severest
strains on the American system; and the law which required a majority of
three to one enabled Louis Napoleon to make himself Emperor. Large
constituencies make independent deputies; but experience proves that
small assemblies, the consequence of large constituencies, can be
managed by Government.
The composite vote and the cumulative vote have been almost universally
rejected as schemes for baffling the majority. But the principle of
dividing the representatives equally between population and property has
never had fair play. It was introduced by Thouret into the constitution
of 1791. The Revolution made it inoperative; and it was so manipulated
from 1817 to 1848 by the fatal dexterity of Guizot as to make opinion
ripe for universal suffrage.
Constitutions which forbid the payment of deputies and the system of
imperative instructions, which deny the power of dissolution, and make
the Legislature last for a fixed term, or renew it by partial
re-elections, and which require an interval between the several debates
on the same measure, evidently strengthen the independence of the
representative assembly. The Swiss veto has the same effect, as it
suspends legislation only when opposed by a majority of the whole
electoral body, not by a majority of those who actually vote upon it.