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 Enuos, 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 inspiration. The masses are power: not reason, not right 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: 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 PAGE And there is the German type of Democracy, temperate, rational, regulated, the product of that natural process of "persistence in mobility," which is the law of the social organism as of the physical; a Democracy recognising the differences naturally springing from individuality, allowing full room for the free play of indefinitely varying personalities, and so constructive and progressive; a Democracy in harmony with the facts of history and of science; at once the outcome and the subject of law In this disciplined, law-abiding, and architectonic Democracy of Germany, we may reasonably hope to see the great social problem of the age receive its solution 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 194 SUMMARY. CHAPTER VII, THE REVOLUTION AND ENGLAND. xxiii 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 thingthe domination, not of the ethical idea, but of brute force 202 203 203 PAGE 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. 206 These things might well make us fear for the future of 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. A CENTURY OF REVOLUTION. CHAPTER I. THE REVOLUTIONARY DOGMA. A CENTURY has passed away since the Duke of Liancourt brought to Louis XVI. the tidings of the capture of the Bastille by the Parisian mob. "It is a revolt!" exclaimed the ill-fated monarch. "Sire," replied the Duke, "it is a Revolution." A Revolution indeed: or, rather, the Revolution of these latter days: the greatest which the world has experienced for well-nigh two thousand years, and which therefore we are accustomed to speak of, not inappropriately, without descriptive date or adjective. The movement which thus received its baptism of blood and fire has since been manifesting itself to the world. The subsequent history of France is essentially the history of its endeavour "to mix itself with life." This is the movement which, first distinctly formulated in 1789, and B |