177 CHAPTER VIII. DEMOCRACY AND NATIONAL UNITY. INDIVIDUALITY AND NATIONALITY. POWERS OF ASSOCIATION AND NATIONALITY. "When a Prince puts his confidence in the People,—a man of courage, &c., himself,—he will never be deserted by them.' -Machiavel. "The People are extremely well qualified for choosing those whom they are to intrust with part of their authority. They have only to be determined by things to which they cannot be strangers, and by facts that are obvious to sense. They can tell when a person has fought many battles, and been crowned with success; they are therefore very capable of electing a general. They can tell when a judge is assiduous in his office, gives general satisfaction, and has never been charged with bribery: this is sufficient for choosing a prætor. They are struck with the magnificence or riches of a fellowcitizen: no more is requisite for electing an ædile. These are facts of which they can have better information in a public forum than a monarch in his palace. But are they capable of conducting an intricate affair, of seizing and improving the opportunity and critical moment of action? No; this surpasses their abilities. "Should we doubt of the People's natural capacity in respect to the discernment of merit, we need only cast an eye on the series of surprising elections made by the Athenians and Romans, which no one surely will attribute to hazard. "We know that, though the people of Rome assumed to themselves the right of raising plebeians to public offices, yet they never would exert this power; and though at Athens the magistrates were allowed, by the law of Aristides, to be elected from all the different classes of inhabitants, there never was a case, says Xenophon, that the common people petitioned for employments which could endanger either their security or their glory."-Montesquieu, v. i, pp. 11 and 12. Three axiomatic truths express and define the effect of Democracy on nationality. The first is, that the more of freedom and N equality there is in a nation, the more numerous, complex, intimate, and harmonious the inter-relations of individuals, and the greater their develop ment. The second is that indicated by De Tocqueville, that wherever freedom increases, "the faculty of association must increase in the same ratio." The third is, that the People in crises always know and appreciate their great men. Here, then, is the creation and increment of power by freedom: its combination; and its effective unity. Nothing can resist a force thus always new created, thus combined, and thus wielded, but such a compact, unyielding, impregnable phalanx of prerogative, privilege, and ignorance, as in resisting Democracy, must also destroy the nation. as Life and freedom,-motion and power, must be taken together for better or for worse ;— "Those," said Montesquieu, "who expect in a free State. to see the People undaunted in war and pusillanimous in peace, are certainly desirous of impossibilities; and it may be advanced as a general rule that whenever a perfect calm is visible, in a State that calls itself a Republic, the spirit of liberty no longer subsists." That the aggregate national manhood constitutes the universal national spirit, and also assumes naturally and necessarily a certain outward form and organisation, is a truism, but a truism illunderstood. It follows from it, that until the universal manhood is prepared by education, and admitted to power, there can be no complete national Unity. That Democracy, or the rule of the equal voting entire national manhood, conduces to the intensest and completest national unity, is also a truism, but until lately no such nation existed, and its existence involves a new world of fact and theory. National unity is threefold,-material, intellectual, and moral. It corresponds to the three elements of manhood, of the body, mind, and character. National manhood bears the same relation to national unity, that manhood does to individual life. If this requires demonstration, we have only to consider what are the complete national unities,the formal and essential conditions of a complete national life. A complete nation has complete and sound its material bases (unity of race, language, boundary, and climate), its individuality (or unity of ideas and character, and institution), and its organic functions, or its Legislative and Executive. In respect of individuality, Democracy guarantees to the nation its natural symmetrical growth and character, preparing for it the most favorable conditions of development in Free School, Press, Church, and Assembly. "Individuality is development." In respect of the organic functions of a democratic State, the People, by an equal and universal act, create the Legislature, and the Executive is an absolute impersonation of their will. The People, the whole national manhoodcreate the institutions. There is therefore the greatest attainable certainty (apart from the question of the excellence of the creation) that the creature and the creator will be at one. In all other systems the institutions are made, not by the all, but for and by the one, the few, or the many. The inference is obvious. In reference to the intense Executive unity necessary to Democracies, and secured by the American Government, the Emperor Napoleon III. has the following profound remarks :— "Whatever Government a nation gives itself, whether monarchical, constitutional, or republican, one of its first and fundamental wants is the spirit of combination. "In a monarchical and aristocratic country, the spirit of combination results from the existence even of those great traditional bodies which receive and perpetuate the idea of former administrations. "But to enable a chief of the democratic Government to give unity and consistency to public affairs, he must have a system, and be armed with the necessary means of adopting it. The national representation, possessed of its immense rights, and holding the budget in its hands, is always in a situation to moderate and to restrain the system, and to put a boundary to its encroachments, if they become contrary to the real or apparent interests of the country. "In electing a President for four years, the United States are aware, in the first place, what system they are raising to power, and they are afterwards certain that this system will be frankly carried out and tried for four years, without any impediments arising from the ministers empowered to apply it, whatever this system may be, whether peace or war, banking, liberation, or slavery, protection, or the annexing a new State. "If after having rendered the President responsible for the acts of his Government, the American constitution had imposed on him the necessity of receiving his ministers from the hands of a parliamentary majority, although these ministers differed from him on many subjects, or even had totally different ideas, the constitution would sullenly, and as it were, regretting that she granted them, rob him of the means of fulfilling duties imposed. It is a manifest truth which will not admit of argument, that to be responsible you must be free, so that the ministers of the President of the United States are the objects of his direct and free choice, the depositaries and organs of his ideas, which they know, they accept, and they obey,are disengaged from all political responsibility towards the chambers, and entirely covered by the responsibility of the President, whose views they only record and carry out. "Such ideas and such facts are, as we have said, an elementary and fundamental necessity in democratic countries, where the chief of the Government who is empowered to direct public affairs upon his own responsibility, should be armed with the necessary authority for effecting his projects. "It is surprising that Monsieur de Tocqueville, who has studied the Government of the United States, should not have perceived as the result of his meditations the spirit of so simple and so wise an arrangement."-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. "Life and Works," vol. ii, pp. 392, 393. The result of the ideal best Government would be, industrial, political, and religious freedom, securing universal distribution of comforts and universal mental activity, and crowning all this with an intense and invincible feeling of nationality, and aspirations after glory, greatness, purity, and God. Does Democracy, which does everything for the individual, do as much as any other system of polity for the State? Securing freedom, and competency, and pro gress, does it also inspire loyalty to order, to greatness, to genius, to the ideal, and to God? |