Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky

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 and to drill it. There are said to have been instances where a regiment of soldiers has been marched to the poll for the purpose of securing the majority for the Government candidate. The system has probably been least dangerous in countries like Germany and the United States, where the powers of the representative body are greatly limited, or in new and distant countries, inhabited by thinly scattered, prosperous, and self-reliant colonists, and where there are no old institutions to be destroyed. Yet, even in these cases the abuses and dangers that flow from it are very apparent.

France, which more than any other country claims the paternity of this form of government, deserves our special attention. In one important respect she seemed peculiarly fitted for it, for the great division of landed property secured a strong conservative basis, and erected the most formidable of all barriers against socialistic innovations. She was also, on account of her almost stationary population, much less exposed than other European nations to that pressure of population on means of subsistence which is one of the chief causes of political disturbances. At the Revolution of 1848 she passed at a single bound from an electorate of about 225,000¹³ voters to universal manhood suffrage. For a few months the new electors turned with an overwhelming enthusiasm to Lamartine. At a time when France was peculiarly rich in great men he was pre-eminently the wonderful man of his age, possessing nearly all the qualities that are most fitted to dazzle great masses of men, though, unfortunately, not those which are most needed for the wise guidance of affairs. As a poet, he was by universal consent among the very greatest France had ever produced, and few men in all French literature have wielded the noble instrument of French prose with such consummate genius and skill. His ‘History of the Girondins,’ untrue, inaccurate, and misleading as it is, had, probably, a greater influence on immediate politics than any other historical work that has ever been written, and the passionate enthusiasm it aroused contributed very largely to the Revolution. He combined, too, as no one has done before or since, the most splendid literary gifts in poetry and prose with the power of enthralling assemblies by his spoken words, swaying and restraining the passions of vast multitudes of excited men. In a great crisis he proved brave, honest, humane, and well-meaning, and he could judge large social questions with wisdom and moderation; but he had neither the true strength nor practical talent that are needed in the government of men, and he was apt to be led astray by a childlike and unrestrained vanity.

      His popularity was for a time so great that ten departments and more than two millions of voters simultaneously elected him to the National Assembly, without any solicitation on his part. But his star soon faded: socialistic attacks on property began to dominate at Paris, and under the terror of these attacks the great mass of voters began to turn towards a saviour of society. The election, by an enormous majority, of Louis Napoleon as President in December, 1848, clearly foreshadowed the future, and the extremely menacing character which the Paris elections assumed led to the law of 1850, which considerably restricted the suffrage. It made three years' residence in the constituency necessary for an elector, and it provided precise and stringent rules by which that resident must be ascertained. In spite of a furious opposition from the Radical party, this law was carried by 433 to 240, and it is said to have disfranchised more than three millions of voters, or about a third part of the electorate.¹⁴

Universal suffrage had lasted just two years; but in the conflict which ensued between the Legislative Assembly and the President, the latter clearly saw that it would be his best weapon. By a stroke of true political sagacity he sent down, in November 1851, a powerfully written presidential message, calling upon the Assembly to repeal the law of 1850, and to restore their franchise to the three million voters. The Chamber received the message with some consternation, and after an agitated debate it resolved by a majority of seven to maintain the existing law. Less than a month later came the Coup d'Etat of December 2, when the chief statesmen and generals of France were arrested in their beds and carried in the dark winter morning to prison; when the Chamber was peremptorily