THE DESPOTISM OF DEMOCRACY. 491 



energy, they find it intolerable. They lapse into doubt as to the 

 divinity, benevolence, and wisdom of the master that holds them 

 in bondage. Like the English barons, they unite to wrest from 

 him some right or privilege, some bar to the arbitrary seizure of 

 their person and property. With the triumph of their courage 

 and efforts passes the power of the one to the hands of the few. 

 As a landed aristocracy, like that of feudalism, or as a commer- 

 cial 'oligarchy, like that of Florence and Venice, they become the 

 new despots. They, in turn, rule by divine right ; their voice is 

 the voice of God ; and disobedience to their commands becomes 

 impiety and treason. While they have introduced, in a measure, 

 the reign of liberty in the ordering of their own lives, the many 

 are still the victims of unmitigated despotism. Whether it be in 

 Greece or Italy, in Spain or England, in France or Germany, their 

 lives and property are not their own. Describing the government 

 of lower Austria at the close of the middle ages, Navagero tells 

 us that there were " five sorts of persons clergy, barons, nobles, 

 burghers, and peasants." Of the peasants, however, " no account " 

 was made, because they had " no voice in the Diet." But there was 

 still a sixth sort the servile laborers of even less account. Yet 

 the peasants were hardly better off than slaves. They were not 

 merely obliged to bear much heavier taxation than the barons, 

 nobles, and burghers, but they had no part in tempering its weight. 

 That, as in other aristocratic countries, was the arbitrary work of 

 the upper classes. As in other countries also, the upper classes 

 determined their own burdens.* There was still to be won for 

 the lower classes the same right. Not only must they be permit- 

 ted to fix the amount of their taxes, but they must have exemp- 

 tion from arbitrary seizure ; they must have impartial justice ; 

 they must have deliverance from the countless restraints upon 

 their freedom. When these conquests of the masses over the 

 classes have been made, there is then the advent of democracy, 

 the power that so many fear and hate, that so many hail as the 

 beginning of a better day. Misrepresented as it has been by 

 friend and foe, it signifies nothing more dreadful or more wonder- 

 ful than the possession of the right of every man to direct his 

 own life as seems to him best. It is the application to politics of 

 the fundamental principle of Protestantism the concession of 

 the same freedom in individual conduct as is granted in individ- 

 ual belief.f 



t 



* James Russell Lowell. Collected Works, vol. vi, p. 14. 



f " As it is useful," says Mill (On Liberty, Ticknor & Fields edition, p. 109), " that 

 while mankind are imperfect, that there should be different opinions, so is it that there 

 should be different experiments of living ; that full scope should be given to varieties of 

 character, short of injury to others, and that the worth of different modes of life should be 

 proved practicable when any one thinks fit to try them." 



