Page DEMOCRACY 20. 1. Plato is more idealistic than Aristotle; hence "the tower of Plato." His works, with those of Aristotle, constitute the most important body of ancient philosophy. 22. 2. Lowell, born in 1819 at Cambridge, Mass., on the edge of the open country, had seen the transformation of his section from a rural to an industrial population. The French travelers had brought back glowing accounts of the simple life of the American settlers and even of the American Indians. Though Lowell did not like the change he would not willingly testify against it; hence the reference to Balaam. See Numbers, xxii, xxiii. 3. The property qualification for suffrage, general in the early years of our government, had been abolished in Massachusetts at the Constitutional Convention in 1820. 4. In the period of the Civil War Massachusetts paid out in bounties and bounty loans $26,000,000 and the war debt of the .state at the close of the war was $15,000,000. 24. 5. In the speech on Moving his Resolution for Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775, Burke says, "I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people." Select Works, Clarendon Press, 1892, Vol. I, p. 192. It is impossible to identify exactly the "French gentleman' referred to. Lowell may have been thinking of the wellknown critic and historian, Taine, who satirized certain American tendencies in his Life and Opinions of F. T. Graindorge. 6. Zola (1840-1902) was at this time (1884) the most discussed novelist in France. His novels include "naturalistic'' pictures of the worst and most depraved elements in French life. 7. Democracy was not nearly so popular in Europe in 1884 as it is at present. The excesses of the Paris Commune in 1871 had dealt a severe blow to the idea that the people can govern themselves. The great Civil War through which we ourselves had passed had likewise discouraged enthusiasm for democracy. Page 25. 8. A species of grape louse which at this time was ruining the vineyards of France. 26. 8a. The Boers had started a revolt in 1880 and in 1881 routed the small British force at Majuba Hill. 9. A distinguished Venetian ambassador (1507-1565). 10. Not one but many of the fathers of the church contested the rights of property. The medieval church held that the taking of interest was sinful and it was this condemnation that threw money-lending as a business into the hands of the Jews. It made no distinction between usury and interest. 11. Proudhon (1809-1865), a French radical and socialist who summarily defined property as a theft in his famous volume What Is Property? published in 1840. 12. Bourdaloue (1632-1704), a famous French pulpit orator, not at all revolutionary in his general conceptions. 13. Montesquieu (1689-1755), author of The Spirit of the Laws and historically the most important of the modern political writers. His work influenced the framers of our Constitution and he is frequently referred to by Jefferson. National workshops (ateliers nationaux) were established in France just before the French Revolution, but Lowell is doubtless thinking about the national workshops which were founded after the Revolution of 1848 in France and which were a failure. Lowell strains his point when he attributes them to Montesquieu. He is trying to prove in this passage that most of the "heresies" attributed to American Democracy were in existence before we had declared our independence. 14. Like all the above statements, true in a measure. the Church of the Middle Ages a career was open to young men of ability, whatever their station, far more readily than at the court or in the army from which persons not of noble birth were in most cases excluded. In 15. Charles V. (1500-1555), Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the time of Luther. More clearly than most of his contemporaries he saw the leaven of "democracy" working in the reforms demanded of the church. The Reformation was a protest against outside authority in religious matters; the Page 27. American and French Revolutions were protests against submission to authority in political matters. The refusal to submit to the rule of any power outside ourselves is the first step in democracy. The idea of "government by the consent of the governed'' is fundamental to it and is frequently emphasized by President Wilson, as in the close of his A World League for Peace. Contrast this with Emperor William's attitude in Note 15 to Wilson's War Message, page 267. 16. That is, extreme poverty (Lazarus) and what it entails, slums, unsanitary conditions, criminality, are plague-spots in a state, which the existence of a very wealthy class (Dives) does not cure or compensate for. 17. "Forge of the races or mother of peoples." The British have of course been recognized as the colonizing people par excellence. 18. Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2. 66 19. The rights of man,' a phrase frequently used by radical thinkers in France in the 18th century, became a shibboleth of the French Revolutionists. Thomas Paine adopted it as the title of his famous reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. These natural rights of men are emphasized in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Many modern political thinkers disagree with this doctrine of "natural rights.'' 28. 20. Lowell was evidently quoting from memory the opening lines of Coleridge's Ode to France. His memory tricked him for the first line should read 29. "The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain.' 21. See Macbeth, Act II, Scenes 2 and 3. 22. An expression of despair. See I Samuel, iv, 21. 30. 23. Joseph Priestly (1733-1804), a nonconformist minister of liberal tendencies, famous in the history of science as well as of religion. He was mobbed in Birmingham in 1791 but not so much for his religious opinions as for his sympathies He spent his last years in 31. with the French Revolution. America. 24. The fear that democracy will reduce all to a "dead In his volume on level" has frequently been entertained. Walt Whitman, J. A. Symonds discusses the question whether there can be any great poetry of democracy, seeing that democracies must lack the contrasts of older civilizations. The fear is groundless. 32 25. Theodore Parker, 1810-1860, an advanced New England theologian and social reformer and a courageous abolitionist. See Note 2 to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. 26. Dekker's beautiful lines deserve quotation. "The best of men That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer, See Thomas Dekker, edited by Ernest Rhys. The Mermaid Series, London, 1887, page 190. 27. Perhaps more correctly Jelal-ed-din-Rumi, 1207-1273, a Persian mystic poet, author of Mathnawi. 27a. The idea that any real democracy must rest on a basis of ideals is one frequently encountered in President Wilson's speeches and admirably characterizes the American attitude. 33. 28. The belief that a democracy could only exist in a small or city-state where all citizens could assemble for deliberation, was frequently held and supported by arguments drawn from history. The Greek republics as well as the Italian republics of the late Middle Age and Renaissance and the northern Free Cities or Communes had all been small. The Swiss republics, like Geneva, were often cited and indeed Geneva was the state Rousseau had most in mind in writing his Social Con tract. We must not forget that our immensely larger democ racy with its universal manhood suffrage and representative government had no precedent in antiquity or indeed in modern times. 28a. The reference is vague, but Lowell is probably referring to England. Queen Victoria was also Empress of India. 29. This is an extreme statement but true in the sense that the framers of the Constitution did not wish to extend suffrage to all citizens regardless of qualifications and that they dis Page trusted unreasoning popular movements. It was for this reason that they "put as many obstacles as they could contrive, not in the way of the people's will, but of their whim." It was for this reason that they divided the functions of government into legislative, judicial, and executive. In adopting this system of "checks and balances" they were following Montesquieu. On all this see the Constitution, Appendix. 34. 30. The French Revolution had tried to throw overboard all previous French tradition. They were to begin with the Year One, a new calendar, a new religion, an entirely new system of government based, so they thought, on reason alone and made to order. Of all these radical innovations the metric system 35. alone survived. 31. It was quite generally held that democracy leads to anarchy since the people are unwilling to curb themselves. Anarchy in its turn disappears before the power of some ambitious despot. This in rough outline was the history of the French nation from the overthrow of the monarchy to the Terror, this anarchy giving way in its turn to the supremacy of Napoleon. The same process had frequently occurred in the Greek republics and in the Italian Cities of the Renaissance. 32. This paragraph makes the task of the founders of the Republic and the Framers of the Constitution seem far easier than it really was. The local state governments were very unwilling to surrender any of their rights or property and the smaller ones were jealous of the larger. Maryland had signed the Articles of Confederation only in 1781 and this first Federation was altogether unsatisfactory. State legislated against state, especially in commercial matters, and there was no central authority to which all would yield. Yet it was impossible to frame a Constitution until 1787 and the difficulties encountered were serious indeed. See Madison's Journal of the Constitutional Convention, edited by E. H. Scott, Scott, Foresman & Co., 1892. 33. The Missouri Compromise (1821) admitted Missouri as a slave state and forbade slavery in territory west of Missouri and north of 36° 39'. It perpetuated the situation in which |