The Rise of the Democracy | Page 2

the Crown--The Democratic Ideals: Socialism and Social Reform--Land Reform and the Single Tax
CHAPTER IX
THE WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT: ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS
East and West--Tyranny under Democratic Forms--The Obvious Dangers--Party Government--Bureaucracy--Working-Class Ascendancy--On Behalf of Democracy
LIST OF PLATES
KING JOHN GRANTING MAGNA CHARTA
MAGNA CHARTA--A FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
SIR JOHN ELIOT
JOHN HAMPDEN
THE GORDON RIOTS
THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURNS, M.P.
THE RIGHT HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P.
THE PASSING OF THE PARLIAMENT BILL IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS

THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY
INTRODUCTION
THE BRITISH INFLUENCE
Our business here is to give some plain account of the movement towards democracy in England, only touching incidentally on the progress of that movement in other parts of the world. Mainly through British influences the movement has become world wide; and the desire for national self-government, and the adoption of the political instruments of democracy--popular enfranchisement and the rule of elected representatives--are still the aspirations of civilised man in East and West. The knowledge that these forms of democratic government have by no means at all times and in all places proved successful does not check the movement. As the British Parliament and the British Constitution have in the past been accepted as a model in countries seeking free political institutions, so to-day our Parliament and our Constitutional Government are still quoted with approval and admiration in those lands where these institutions are yet to be tried.
The rise of democracy, then, is a matter in which Britain is largely concerned; and this in spite of the fact that in England little respect and less attention has been paid to the expounders of democracy and their constructive theories of popular government. The notion that philosophers are the right persons to manage affairs of state and hold the reins of Government has always been repugnant to the English people, and, with us, to call a man "a political theorist" is to contemn him. The English have not moved towards democracy with any conscious desire for that particular form of government, and no vision of a perfect State or an ideal commonwealth has sustained them on the march. Our boast has been that we are a "practical" people, and so our politics are, as they ever have been, experimental. Reforms have been accomplished not out of deference to some moral or political principle, but because the abuse to be remedied had become intolerable. Dissatisfaction with the Government and the conviction that only by enfranchisement and the free election of representatives can Parliament remove the grounds of dissatisfaction, have carried us towards democracy.
GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE
We have been brought to accept Abraham Lincoln's famous phrase, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," as a definition of democracy; but in that acceptance there is no harking back to the early democracies of Greece or Rome, so beloved by the French democrats of the eighteenth century, who, however, knew very little about those ancient states--or any vain notion of restoring primitive Teutonic democracy.
The sovereign assemblies of Greece--the Ecclesia of Athens, and the Apella of Sparta--the Comitia Centuriata of Rome, have no more resemblance to democracy in the twentieth century than the Witenagemot has to the British Parliament; and the democracy which has arisen in modern times is neither to be traced for its origin to Greece or Rome, nor found to be evolved from Anglo-Saxon times. The early democracies of Athens and Sparta were confined to small states, and were based on a slave population without civic rights. There was not even a conception that slaves might or should take part in politics, and the slaves vastly outnumbered the citizens. Modern democracy does not tolerate slavery, it will not admit the permanent exclusion of any body of people from enfranchisement; though it finds it hard to ignore differences of race and colour, it is always enlarging the borders of citizenship. So that already in the Australian Commonwealth, in New Zealand, in certain of the American States, in Norway, and in Finland, we have the complete enfranchisement of all men and women who are of age to vote.
Apart from this vital difference between a slave-holding democracy and a democracy of free citizens--a difference that rent the United States in civil war, and was only settled in America by democracy ending slavery--ancient democracy was government by popular assembly, and modern democracy is government through elected representatives. The former is only possible in small communities with very limited responsibilities--a parish meeting can decide questions of no more than strictly local interest; for our huge empires of to-day nothing better than representative government has been devised for carrying out the general will of the majority.
As for the early English Witenagemot, it was simply an assembly of the chiefs, and, though crowds sometimes attended, all but the great men were the merest spectators.