PAGE Its issue cannot be doubtful; the doctrines of absolute political equality, and of the supreme right of the numerical majority-relatively poor-must issue in Socialism This is the hell which awaiteth the nation that loveth and maketh a lie. And a lie the Revolutionary dogma assuredly is. Every one of the propositions which constitute its ideal of man and of society, is demonstrably, is obviously, false 169 171 Bishop Butler's question, whether nations can go mad, is answered by a Century of Revolution. A nation given over to the strong delusion to believe the Revolutionary dogma, can hardly be accounted sane. 176 Still, not by its mendacity, but by the truth latent in it, does any lie live. In the Revolutionary dogma are hidden various verities But the great fact called Modern Democracy is one thing. The Revolutionary dogma is another. There is no necessary connection between them. In truth, the work of the Revolution for Modern Democracy has been chiefly to pervert and falsify it, and to retard indefinitely its development The phase called Democracy into which Europe has entered, is the latest term in a movement which has been in progress since the beginning of our civilisa 178 179 tion 180 The history of that civilisation is the history of the everadvancing vindication of human personality. Modern Democracy expresses the realisation of this great fact It means the conclusion within the dîμos, or populus, of those large classes whom the ancient democracies excluded; the full recognition of their status as persons; and their direct influence upon public affairs. The advent of the masses, of the numerical majority, to immediate political authority is the social fact of the day. Democracy is not light, or leading, or wisdom, or inspira- tion. We may say that, generally speaking, there are in the modern world two types of Democracy; the Revolutionary type, faithfully represented by contemporary France, which is moulded by an abstract idea, and that a false one: which, in the name of a spurious equality assassinates liberty and depersonalises man: I which gives the lie to the facts of science and the facts of history: which is essentially chaotic, as lacking those elements of stability and tradition that are essential to society: which has no sense of any law superior to popular wilfulness, and which is condemned already, simply by the very fact that it is anarchic PAGE 181 182 183 184 And there is the German type of Democracy, temperate, rational, regulated, the product of that natural pro- In this disciplined, law-abiding, and architectonic Demo- PAGE 185 188 Democracy must be scientific; it must accept all the facts of all the sciences, and the lessons which they teach. 189 And specially must it lay to heart what is implied in the social organism. But the one thing before all others necessary for it to learn, is the true doctrine of Right; for the State is essentially an ethical society, rooted and grounded in the moral law. The very foundation of the public order is the rational acknowledgment that there are eternal, immutable, principles and rules of right and wrong. This is the everlasting adamant upon which alone the social edifice can be surely established 192 194 CHAPTER VII, THE REVOLUTION AND ENGLAND. England, of all countries, might have been expected, from her past history, to be likely to organise and regulate the contemporary democratic movement But the changes whereby our institutions have been brought into harmony with that movement, have been leaps in the dark, taken in the quest for party majorities Now, a share of political power, nominally an equal share, is in the hands of every householder. It is a change which has been watched with anxiety by the clearest heads PAGE 197 198 200 Mr. Bagehot's defence of it: that "the nominal constituency is not the real" 201 One of the latest and ugliest features of our political life is the growth of a new school of Liberalism breathing the spirit of the Revolutionary dogma Mr. Gladstone its most notable adherent. His natural dispositions for the new gospel. His claim to consistency The fundamental principle of this new school of English Liberalism is the sovereignty of the masses-the sovereignty of the people is a very different thing— the domination, not of the ethical idea, but of brute force 202 203 . 203 The results of their application of this principle have been to lay the axe to the very root of liberty which is in "government by law," and to sink the House of Commons in an ever increasing degradation These things might well make us fear for the future of PAGE 206 207 A portion of the materials for this work has been obtained from essays of mine in the Quarterly, Dublin, and Fortnightly Reviews, by permission of the respective Editors, whose kindness I desire here to acknowledge. W. S. L. |