DEMOCRACY. 



DEMOLITION. 



cation for certain offices, a* in on* of the forma of democracy mentioned 

 by Aristotle, by the universal sovereign, nuch requisite qualification 

 doe* not in itself alter the nature of the democracy, being only a rule 

 or law fixed by the sovereign. It is, however, a rule or law of that 

 class, the tatJemey of which, where the (orereign power i possessed by 

 the many, U to undermine and ultimately destroy the power that 

 made it 



Experienoe ha abown that even where the universal people are 

 aorelfn. if the political community U large and spread over a great 

 surface, every delegation of power, however necessary, U accompanied 

 with dangrr to the exigence of the sovereign power. The more com- 

 plicated the machinery of administration becomes, and the more 

 numerotu are the admini*tering bodies interpoeed between the sove- 

 reign and the accomplishment of the object for which the sovereign 

 dnlcytia part of hi* power, the greater in the risk of those who 

 have had power delegated to them making themselvea the mantcni 

 of those who have conferred the power. In a democracy the 

 great problem must be to preserve unimpaired and undisputed the 

 vital principle of the sovereign power being in all and in every 

 individual, and to combine with this such a system of delegated powers 

 a* shall in their operation always recognise that principle to which 

 they owe their existence. 



Aristotle ('Pol.' iv. 6) well observes that a polity may not be 

 democratic according to the laws, that is, the fundamental laws or 

 constitution, hut that by opinion and usage it may be administered 

 democratically : in like manner a democratic constitution may come to 

 be administered oligarchically ; and he explains how this may come 



1 ! :- 



It ma' 



It may happen that other persons besides those enumerated may be 

 excluded from participation in the sovereign power in a government 

 which is called a democracy. The suffrage may be given only to those 

 who have a certain amount of property, which resembles one of the 

 ruin mentioned by Aristotle. If the amount of property required 

 should exclude a great number of the people, the government might 

 still lie called democratical rather than by any other name, if the 

 persons excluded were a small minority compared with the majority. 

 If they were nearly equal in numbers to the majority, they would find 

 out some name for the majority which would express their opinion of 

 the form of government: and the word that they would now use 

 would be aristocratical, a word which would imply dislike and censure. 

 If the portion of the people who were thus excluded from the suffrage 

 should be a majority, the ruling body would be properly called an 

 aristocracy. 



A democracy has been here defined as it has existed in some coun- 

 tries and as it exists in others. No attempt is made to ascertain its 

 origin, any more than the origin of society. It is here viewed as a 

 form of government that may and does exist. The foundation of the 

 n<>tin of a democracy is that the sovereign power is equally dis- 

 tributed, not among all the people in a state, but among all the freemen 

 who have attained a certain age, which is defined. Democracy there- 

 fore, if we derive the notion of it from all democracies that have 

 existed, instead of from certain wild theories of natural rights, is based 

 njf n tliv principle that it U for the general interest that some persons 

 should be excluded from the possession of that political power which 

 others enjoy. A democracy also like a monarchy can only give effect 

 to it* will through the medium of forms and agents. Practically there 

 cannot always be a reference to the will of the majority on every occa- 

 sion, no more than there can be in a monarchy. A monarch must govern 

 by the aid of others, and the sovereign democracy must carry ite purposes 

 into effect by the aid of members of its body, to whom power sufficient 

 for the purpose is given. The agent of a democracy is a representative 

 body for the purpose of legislating. For the usual purposes of adminis- 

 < a democracy must have agents, officers, and functionaries, as 

 well as a monarchy. The mode in which they are chosen and the 

 tenure of office may be different, but while they act, they must have 

 power delegated of a like kind to that which a monarch delegates. A 

 form of government may be such that there shall be an hereditary 

 head, a class with peculiar privileges, and also a representative body. 

 The existence of a representative body chosen by a large class of the 

 people, has led to the appellation of the term democratical to that 

 portion of such governments which is composed of a representative 

 body, and to those who elect such body. But the use of the terms 

 democracy and democratical, as applied to such bodies, tends to cause 

 confusion. It is true that such mixed governments present the 

 spectacle of a struggle between the dillerent members of the sovereign 

 power, and as it is often assumed that the popular part aims at 

 destroying the other parts, and as many speculators wish that it should 

 ultimately destroy them, such speculators speak of such so-called 

 democracy as a thing existing by itself, as if it were a distinct power in 

 the state ; whereas, according to the strict notion of sovereignty, there 

 is no democracy except when there is no other power which partici- 

 pates in the sovereignty than individuals possessed of equal political 

 power. When the popular member of a sovereign body has destroyed 

 all the other members, the popular member becomes the sovereign 

 body, and it is a democracy, if it then corresponds to the description 

 that has been given of a democracy. 



A curious article by M. Ouizot, entitled ' Of Democracy in Modern 

 Society,' has been translated and published in England. It us written 



with reference to the condition of France, and in opposition to the 

 assertion made by some French writers " that modern society, our 

 France, is democratical, entirely democratical ; and that her institu- 

 tions, her laws, her government, her administration, her politics, must 

 all rest on this basis, be adapted to this condition." U. Ouizot success- 

 fully combats certain hypotheses and assumptions, most of which 

 however hove either been exploded by all sound political writers or 

 wunlil be rejected by any man of reflection. His essay contains, as we 

 might expect from his attainment* and long experience in the world, 

 many just remarks, but it is disfigured and often rendered almost un- 

 meaning by the lax use of political terms and a tone of mysticism and 

 obscurity which are better adapted to confuse than to convince. 



In the third volume of ' Political Philosophy,' published in 1846, 

 Lord Brougham has treated the subject at considerable length, and 

 illustrated it with examples which fully support the views given 



DEMOIVRE'S HYPOTHESIS. An hypothesis on the duration of 

 human life, formed by Demoivre, as he informs us in the preface of 

 his ' Treatise on Annuities,' some years after the publication of the 

 first edition of his ' Treatise on Chances,' on the inspection of ' Halley's 

 Breslau Tables.' Observing that the decrements of life at the middle 

 ages were very nearly uniform, Demoivre made an extension of this 

 law to the whole of life, not thereby intending to assert that any such 

 principle was correct for childhood and old sge, but simply that the 

 effect of the error upon the value of annuities at the middle ages of 

 life would be trivial. The hypothesis is as follows : of evjhty-iix jter- 

 font born, ant diet every year, till nil are tj-tinct. The remainder <>f 

 eighty-six years, at every age, Demoivre called the complement of life. 

 The half of the complement of life is the average duration (commonly 

 called the expectation) ; and the peculiarity of Demoivre's hypothesis 

 is, that, according to it, every person has an even chance of living the 

 average time of people of his age, which is not true of other tables. 

 The Northampton Tables certainly do nearly coincide with this law at 

 the middle periods of life, but the Carlisle and most other tables differ 

 materially from it. Thus at twenty years of age, according to the 

 Carlisle Tables, the average duration is to the age of sixty-one and a 

 half, while each individual aged twenty hat an even chance of living to 

 be about sixty-five years of age. 



The following table (left hand) shows the number of persons out of 

 ten thousand who may be expected to die in the year next following 

 their attaining the age marked in the first column, according to this 

 hypothesis, the Northampton and Carlisle Tables, and the Belgian 

 Tables of M. Quetelet : 



Hypo- North- Car- Bel- 

 Age, thesis, ampton. lisle, gian. 



10 

 20 

 30 

 40 

 JO 

 GO 

 70 



132 

 162 

 179 

 217 

 278 

 389 

 62! 



92 

 140 

 171 



IN 



284 

 402 

 640 



45 



71 

 101 

 130 

 134 

 339 

 910 



88 

 120 

 136 

 144 

 183 

 325 

 680 



80 1667 



1343 1217 1425 



Age. 

 10 

 20 

 30 

 40 

 50 

 60 

 70 

 80 



Hypo. 



ihHta, 



199 



18-5 



16-8 



14-8 



12-5 



9-7 



6-4 



2-3 



North- 

 ampton. 

 20-7 

 18-6 

 16-9 

 14-8 

 12-4 

 9-8 

 6-7 

 3-8 



Car. 

 lisle. 



23-5 



21-7 



1M 



17-1 



11-3 



10-5 



7-1 



4-4 



The right hand table shows the values of annuities on lives of the 

 ages in the first column, at three per cent., in years' purchase. Practi- 

 cally speaking, then, the celebrated Northampton Tables agree with 

 Demoivre's hypothesis in their money results, though by no mean* 

 exhibiting the same physical law of life. 



It must be observed of Demoivre's hypothesis, th.it any one which 

 supposes uniform decrements throughout is entitled to the name, 

 whether the limit of life be eighty-six years or not v Conformably to 

 this view, the modification which best represents the Carlisle Tables 

 would be, that, of 128 persons born, one dies every year; a supposition 

 which would be as much in excess on one side, for ol<l HTM, as that of 

 eighty-six is in defect, but which would represent the Carlisle Tables 

 from twenty to fifty years of age as well as the use of eighty-six does 

 the Northampton Tables. 



DEMOLITION of works, buildings, Ac. The method to be cm- 

 ployed in the destruction of works, buildings, bridges, Ac., by gun- 

 powder in war time, being go much dependent on the amount of 

 labour and time which can be employed on it, and the fact that no 

 certain rules have yet been arrived at for determining the \ 

 charges for throwing down masonry, make the military engineer 

 dependent on his own judgment, and a consideration of some of the 

 example!, of demolitions which have been successful, but at the same 

 time render the subject too diffuse to be more than hinted at in such 

 an article as the present ; the reader being referred for details of the 

 subject to the article ' Demolition,' by Qen. Sir H. D. Jones, U.K.. in 

 the ' R.E. Akle-Memoire.' The works which a military engineer is 

 principally called upon to destroy are, revetments, towers, maga/.inc, 

 military buildings, bridges, and barriers. 



KevetmenU have been destroyed in a variety of ways, either by 

 piercing the foot of the revetment from the ditch, or by sinking xlmfta 

 at the back of the revetment, or by i mining galleries from the interior 

 of the work to the back of the revetment, the employment of either of 

 these means being dependent on the circumstances of the nature of 

 the revetment, and of the noil of the rampart. In the destruction of 



