Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky

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СКАЧАТЬ same time, by depreciating the great centres of intelligence, to flatter the more ignorant voters. It is a truth which should never be forgotten, that in the field of politics the spirit of servility and sycophancy no longer shows itself in the adulation of kings and nobles. Faithful to its old instinct of grovelling at the feet of power, it now carries its homage to another shrine. The men who, in former ages, would have sought by Byzantine flattery to win power through the favour of an emperor or a prince, will now be found declaiming on platforms about the iniquity of privilege, extolling the matchless wisdom and nobility of the masses, systematically trying to excite their passions or their jealousies, and to win them by bribes and flatteries to their side. Many of those who are doing their best to reduce the influence of education and intelligence in English politics are highly cultivated men, who owe to university education all that they are, though they are now imitating—usually with awkward and overstrained effort—the rant of the vulgar demagogue. They have taken their line in public life, and some of them have attained their ends. I do not think that the respect of honest men will form any large part of their reward.

      It is curious how often in modern England extreme enthusiasm for education is combined with an utter disregard for the opinions of the more educated classes. The movement against the influence of property is at least as strong as against the influence of education. One of the forms that it now chiefly takes is the outcry against plural voting. It is denounced as an abuse and an injustice that some great landlord who has property in several counties, or in several towns, should possess a vote for each constituency in which he possesses property. To me, at least, it appears that such an arrangement is most natural, expedient, and just. In each of these localities the voter has considerable material interests; in each of them he pays taxes; in each of them he discharges public duties; in each of them he probably exercises local influence as a landlord or an employer of labour. He takes part in each constituency in local charities, in local movements, in local business, and represents in each a clearly recognised, and often very considerable force. Can there be anything more reasonable than that he should have in each constituency a voice in the political representation? Can there be anything more irrational than to maintain that, in all these constituencies except one, he should be denied that minute fraction of political power which is accorded to the poorest day-labourer in his employment? Mill and some other advocates of universal suffrage have maintained that while every one should have a vote, plural voting should be largely extended, giving special privileges to special qualifications. It would be difficult to enact, and probably still more difficult to maintain, such privileges under a democratic ascendency; but plural voting connected with property is rooted by long-established custom in the habits of the country, and though its influence is not very great, it does something to make the Legislature a true picture and reflection of the forces in the country, and to qualify the despotism of simple numbers.

We may take another illustration of a different kind. Let the reader place himself in imagination at the Guildhall or at St. Paul's, and consider for a moment all that is included within a square mile taken from these centres. Probably no other spot on the globe comprises so many of the forms and elements of power. Think of all the wealth, all the varieties of knowledge, all the kinds of influence and activity that are concentrated in that narrow space. In the most distant quarters of the Empire men of enterprise and initiative turn to the city of London for assistance; each fluctuation of its prosperity is felt to the furthest confines of the civilised world. There is scarcely a Government that does not owe something to it, and its agencies radiate far beyond civilisation, among savage tribes and through unreclaimed deserts. It is the great heart of the Empire, beating in close, constant, active correspondence with all its parts. And yet, according to the democratic theory, a square mile of the City should have exactly the same weight in the political system as a square mile of Stepney or of Shadwell. Can any one suppose that a theory of representation so palpably and grotesquely at variance with the reality of things has any real prospect of enduring?

The complete submission of all taxation to the will of a mere numerical majority is an end which we have not yet fully attained, but towards which we are manifestly travelling. Every few years something is done in this direction, either by lowering the suffrage, or by abolishing ex-officio guardians of the poor, or by extinguishing plural voting, or by suppressing or weakening property qualifications. The inevitable result is to give one class the power of voting taxes which another class almost exclusively pay, and the chief taxpayers, being completely swamped, are for all practical purposes completely disfranchised. As I have already noticed, it would be difficult to conceive a more flagrant abandonment of that principle about the connection between taxation and voting which in former generations was looked on as the most fundamental principle of British freedom. It is curious to find men who are steadily labouring for this end declaiming on the iniquity of the aristocracy of the eighteenth century in attempting to tax America without her consent. Democracy pushed to its full consequences places the whole property of the country in the hands of the poorest classes, giving them unlimited power of helping themselves. At the same time, under its influence the effect of distant considerations on political action is steadily diminishing. Very naturally, every restraint of economy under such a system is weakened, and the sphere of Government activity and expense is rapidly increased. But evils much graver than mere extravagance and inequitable taxation are impending in a country which has no very extraordinary natural resources, and which owes its almost unique economical position mainly to its great accumulation of movable wealth, and to the national credit which secure wealth alone can give.

It is a saying of the great German historian, Sybel, that ‘the realisation of universal suffrage in its consequences has always been the beginning of the end of all parliamentarism.’ I believe that a large majority of the most serious and dispassionate observers of the political world are coming steadily to the same conclusion. Parliamentary government which is mainly directed by the educated and propertied classes is an essentially different thing from parliamentary government resting on a purely democratic basis. In all the instances in which this form of government has been conspicuously successful, the representative body was returned on a restricted suffrage. This is manifestly true of the British Parliaments of the past. The Italian Parliaments which displayed such eminent wisdom and forbearance after the war of 1859 and after the death of Cavour; the Austrian Parliaments which carried the singularly wise and moderate legislation that has transformed Austria from a reactionary despotism into one of the best-governed countries in Europe; the Belgian Parliaments which, in spite of furious religious animosities, established among a French-speaking population constitutional government which endured without organic change for sixty years, and which their more brilliant neighbours have wholly failed to rival; the Dutch Parliaments, which represent a country where self-government has long been as perfectly attained as in any portion of the globe—were all elected on a very high suffrage. All these nations have during the last years either entered upon the experiment of democracy or are now trembling on the verge. The result is already very apparent. In Italy, where the experiment has been longest tried, it has already led to a great and manifest deterioration in public life. In Belgium, its first effect was to break up the Parliament into groups, and to shatter the power of the Moderate Liberals.

In several countries pure democracy has been connected with extreme instability of government, with rapidly increasing taxation and debt, with broken credit, with perpetual military insurrections, with constantly recurring alternations of anarchy and despotism. In Mexico, it has been computed that in the thirty-two years between 1821 and 1853 no less than forty-eight different forms of government succeeded each other.¹¹ In Spain, democracy in its most exaggerated form has been repeatedly adopted. There was an extremely democratic constitution established in 1812, overthrown in 1814, re-established in 1820, again destroyed in 1823. After a long succession of insurrections and constitutional vicissitudes, which it is unnecessary to recount, universal suffrage was established by the Republican revolution of 1868 It prevailed, in spite of several revolutions of power, till 1877, and during this time the credit of the country was irretrievably ruined by the immense increase of the debt. In 1877 a high property electoral qualification was established. In 1887 it was somewhat modified. In 1890 universal suffrage, chiefly qualified by a two years' residence, was re-established.¹² In many cases where universal suffrage exists it has been rendered nugatory by the success with which the governing power has been able to manage СКАЧАТЬ