Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky

CHAPTER 3

       Democracy an inevitable fact

       Is not uniformly favourable to liberty

       Illustrations from Roman and French history

       Equality naturally hostile to liberty

       Love of democracy for authoritative regulation

       Effects of the increase of State power—Taxation and liberty

       Other dangers to liberty

       Party system hastened the transformation

       Some Suggested Remedies

       Change in the Irish representation

       Class representation—Its history and decline

       Representation of minorities

       An educational franchise

       Mill's suggestions for mitigating dangers of universal suffrage

       Repudiated by modern Radicalism—The ‘fancy’ franchises

       The Swiss Referendum—Its history and influence

       Its recent adoption in the United States

       Attempt to introduce it into Belgium

       Arguments for and against it

       Belief that a low suffrage is naturally conservative

       Extension of the power of committees—The American committee system

       The French system

       English parliamentary committees—Devolution

       Proposal that Governments should only resign on a vote of want of confidence

       Arguments against it

       Probability that democratic Parliaments will sink in power

       Democratic local government—Success of English local government

       Largely due to property qualifications

       Almost all of them now abolished—Act of 1894

       This is the more serious on account of the great increase in taxation

       The local debt

       Increase of State Taxation in Europe—Its Causes

       Military expenditure—Standing armies

       Buckle's prediction of the decline of wars

       The commercial spirit now favours territorial aggrandisement

       Growing popularity of universal military service

       Arguments in its defence

       Importance of the question to the English race

       Arguments against it

       Conscription and universal suffrage connected

       But the military system may come into collision with the parliamentary system

       National education—Its social and political effects

       Primary education assuming the character of secondary education

       Sanitary reform

       Reformatories and prison reform

       Increased taxation due to increased State regulation—Herbert Spencer's views

       Necessity for some extension of State control

       Advantages of State action in some fields

       Government credit—Enterprises remunerative to the State

       Unremunerative forms of literature and art

       Subsidies to the theatre

       Dangers of State regulation and subsidies

       Change in the character of democracy since Joseph Hume

       Motives that have led to State aggrandisement

       Mr. Goschen on its extent

       Attempts to push it still further—The Manchester school repudiated

       Tendency to throw all taxation on one class

       Tocqueville and Young on English taxes in the eighteenth century