Chapter 19
Rule by the people; popular government, majority rule, equality and suffrage.
246 passages · 94 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Democracy, rule by the people, takes in more than one form of government among several. In these books it names a constitution, a doctrine about where authority comes from, a claim of equality, a set of procedures for voting and representation, and, for some writers, a temper of society that can exist under any form. It is a great idea for the Harvard Classics because the collection runs from the Athenian assembly as Plutarch reports it to the American republic as Lincoln, Whitman and Lowell understood it. Between those points stand two powerful modern voices pulling in opposite directions: Burke’s reply to the French Revolution and Mill’s long effort to make representative democracy safe for liberty. The question these texts keep asking is whether the many can govern well, and if so, under what conditions.
The most famous definition in the collection is Lincoln’s at Gettysburg: government of the people, by the people, for the people, resting on the proposition that all men are created equal1. Lowell takes up that formula and pairs it with an ethical conception of mutual equality, while calling the whole an experiment in government2. The argument for self-rule is older than either. Goethe’s Egmont asks whether it is not fitter for the many to entrust their interests to the many than to one3. Emerson’s verse imagines plain laborers, with no nobles among them, gathering to choose their rulers and found a state4. Yet a definition by government did not satisfy everyone. Lowell insists that democracy is first a sentiment, the natural wish of people to manage their own affairs5. Its essence, he says, is an open career for talent, a society in which every man has a chance whatever the government is called6. Whitman finds the genius of the United States in the common people rather than its officials7, and he joins the single separate person to the democratic mass8. The sentiment also has a literary history. Aristophanes’ Euripides calls it his democratic way to let servants and women speak9. Mazzini credits Byron’s attention to modest things with fostering the feeling of equality10,11. Schiller places the realized equality that politicians seek in the aesthetic realm12.
The ancients treat democracy mainly as one constitution among others, and they tell how it came about. Plutarch traces Athenian democracy to Themistocles’ naval policy, which shifted power to the sailors and the populace against the nobility13. His Lives show democracies set up and overthrown by faction and foreign arms: Pericles installs one at Samos14, and the Argives and Spartans alternately suppress and restore popular rule15,16. Rousseau gives a theoretical genealogy, in which communities with little inequality among their members kept the supreme administration in common17. Bacon observes that democracies need no nobility and are quieter for their equality, citing the Swiss and the Low Countries18.
Many writers, however, find democratic elements inside other constitutions. Tacitus’ Germans assent to proposals by murmur or by clashing arms19. Luther derives the minister’s authority from the election of a community whose members have equal power20. Macaulay sees a tinge of democracy pervading the monarchies and aristocracies of northern Italy, because assembled townspeople are formidable to rulers21,22. Voltaire admires the English for sharing government with the people without confusion23. Emerson calls the church Europe’s democratic principle24. Lowell goes further: he names the Church the first organized democracy and holds the British Constitution essentially democratic25. Not everyone welcomed the mixture. Winthrop defends Massachusetts as a mixed form precisely to avoid a mere democracy26, and England judged Franklin’s plan to have too much of the democratic in it27. Lowell admits that the American founders did not intend a strict democracy, though their system developed democratically28.
The doctrine of popular sovereignty gives the idea its theoretical spine. Vane holds that sovereignty lies originally in the body of the people and is exercised through representatives they choose29,30,31. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut let the freemen call a general court themselves if the magistrates neglect to32. Marshall rests the federal government directly on the people, whose act of ratification was final33 and who may resume the powers they granted34. Lincoln calls the people his rightful masters35. He warns that if the Court fixes policy irrevocably, the people cease to be their own rulers36, and he trusts their ultimate justice, secured by short terms of office37. Even Machiavelli, no democrat, judges the people’s aim more honourable than the nobles’, since they want only not to be oppressed, and he warns that no prince is safe against a hostile populace38.
Burke is the great dissenter. He calls the theorists of popular election new fanatics of arbitrary popular power39, and he objects that their doctrine would make Commons, Lords and Crown alike usurpations40,41. Popular choice, he argues, cannot confer virtue or wisdom on those it elects42.
Sovereignty of the people means, in practice, the rule of the majority, and these texts handle the principle with marked coolness. Hobbes treats the greater number’s voice as the voice of the whole only as a rule of representation43, and he works out the mechanics of deadlock and veto44. Pascal says we follow the majority because it has more power, not more reason45,46. Franklin’s fire company accepts majority decision simply as the usage of all societies47. Lowell, the warmest democrat here, still calls majority rule a clumsy way of reaching truth, though a convenient way of settling what is expedient for the moment48. Lincoln’s formulation is the most careful: a majority restrained by constitutional checks is the only true sovereign of a free people49.
Burke and Mill, so opposed elsewhere, converge on the danger of an unchecked majority. Burke calls absolute democracy a corruption of a republic, one in which the majority may oppress the minority more furiously than any monarch50, and he denies that a constitution is a problem in arithmetic51. Mill reaches a similar point by another road. He records that the people once thought elective rulers identified with themselves needed no limits52. Experience, however, showed that self-government means the government of each by all the rest53. Popular will gives no right to silence even one dissenter54, and majority feeling can act as a kind of sumptuary law over private life55. Mill credits Tocqueville with teaching him both the excellences and the dangers of numerical majorities56.
Equality is the moral ground on which the whole idea rests. Plutarch’s Aristides opens government to all Athenians in recognition of their valor57. Froissart’s John Ball preaches that all descend from Adam and Eve58. Emerson makes the argument precise: equal personal rights demand democracy, while unequal property calls for government by owners59. Burke grants equal rights in society but denies any equal share of power60. True moral equality, for him, lies in virtue61. Levellers never level; some class must be uppermost, and to force tailors and carpenters to rule is to violate nature62. Dana, from the quarterdeck, likewise rejects equality aboard ship. He notes that even the most democratic governments grant alarming emergency powers, trusting public opinion and accountability to restrain their use63.
On the question of who may vote, the movement over time is unmistakably toward inclusion, though rarely without argument. Aristophanes urges enfranchising the slaves who fought at sea64. Cromwell’s Instrument of Government restricts the vote by a property qualification65. The American amendments forbid denying the vote on account of race or sex66,67. Mill is the central figure here. He argues against his father’s Essay that women’s interests are not contained in men’s68,69, and he presses the claims of the working classes in Parliament70. He refuses a manhood-suffrage programme that stopped short of women71. Lowell defends universal suffrage on the grounds that broad-based constitutions are steadiest and that voting is learned by practice72. Emerson notes more sourly that popular education is urged out of fear of the growing mass of voters73.
Mill also wanted to correct the arithmetic that so troubled him and Burke. He proposed Hare’s personal representation so that minorities would keep a voice74,75. He also proposed plural votes for proven education76, though he later judged plural voting inadmissible while the working classes had so little weight even with equal votes77.
The working of elections drew satire and reform alike. Plutarch reports Roman votes bought and sold78. Burns lampoons candidates who kiss barefoot old women to win votes79, and he stages voters quarrelling over whom to send80. Tennyson writes of the rotten hustings81. Mill fought the cost of elections, which shut out poorer candidates82, and he fought bribery83, only to see reform defeated by party self-interest84. Burke, for his part, argues that wider canvassing multiplies the arts of low ambition85. His most detailed analysis is of the French electoral scheme. He finds that it professes equal rights while imposing property qualifications86,87. It apportions deputies unequally among cantons88,89. Its many stages of indirect election sever the representative from the people, so that neither his fitness can be known nor his responsibility enforced90,91. The colonial charters, by contrast, keep the bond close: freemen choose deputies annually so that the country may have yearly liberty to act for its welfare92,93.
The case against democracy is drawn above all from Athens and Rome. Plutarch’s people ostracize men too eminent for popular equality94. They banish Aristides from envy of his reputation95 and persecute their best generals at the urging of frivolous accusers96. Socrates recalls their illegal condemnation of the generals97. Demagogues flatter them: Pericles courts them with public money and shows98,99, and Caesar does the same with games and feasts100. Thucydides, as Plutarch reports him, calls Pericles’ rule a democracy in name but in fact one man’s supremacy101. Carlyle recalls Cleon the Tanner leading Athens astray102, and he reports Machiavelli’s judgment that popular self-government cannot last103.
Burke extends the indictment to the modern case. In a perfect democracy, he argues, responsibility is diffused across the multitude, which removes both shame and the fear of punishment104. Ancient democracies were ruined by government through occasional decrees105. Democracy tends toward party tyranny106, and he predicts that a deliberating army will become a military democracy that devours its makers107,108. Carlyle’s Napoleon becomes the armed soldier of the democratic cause109. Mill adds a subtler charge: government by the many cannot rise above mediocrity unless a gifted one or few guides it110. Adam Smith notes the thoughtless extravagance of democracies at war111.
The defenses answer these charges partly by evidence and partly by redefinition. Lowell argues that the forebodings of timid men have been belied112. Town self-government has been honest113, and immigrants have been made good citizens114. Democracies err, he grants, but they have also honored worthy men115. Against the old lesson drawn from petty Greek cities, he points to Lincoln, who assumed a democracy can think116,117. Emerson’s defense is relative rather than absolute: democracy is better for us because religious sentiment now accords with it, as it once did with monarchy118. Mill likewise treats representative democracy as relative to circumstance, yet declares that he weighed the objections and decided for it119,120. Even Burke denies only that pure democracy is the sole tolerable form, not that popular elements belong in a constitution121.
Both sides agree that democracy needs safeguards. Burke wants an independent judicature, like the Areopagus at Athens122. Mill relies on citizen participation to keep democracy from sinking into despotism123. He assigns the popular assembly the task of controlling legislation rather than drafting it124.
What remains open is the relation between the two senses with which the collection began. If democracy is a form of government, its defects are the ancient ones of envy, flattery and the tyranny of numbers. If it is a sentiment of equality and an open career for talent, as Lowell and Whitman hold, then its success depends on the character of a people more than on any arrangement of ballots. Lowell himself names the danger he sees ahead in Socialism and a corrupted public opinion125. Mill, looking beyond democracy, came to dread the ignorance of the mass while still hoping for something further126. Neither the critics nor the defenders in these books claim to have closed the question.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Liberty 7b
See also: Government 7a
See also: Constitution 5a · Wealth 13d · Government 7a
See also: Aristocracy 6b
See also: Government, Constitution, Liberty, Aristocracy, Revolution, Citizen