The Rise of the Democracy

Joseph Clayton

Informations

• Publié par: nazor
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 37
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Rise of the Democracy, by Joseph Clayton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Rise of the Democracy Author: Joseph Clayton Release Date: October 23, 2006 [eBook #19609] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY*** E-text prepared by Afra Ullah, Keith Edkins, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY BY JOSEPH CLAYTON Author of "Leaders of the People" "Bishops as Legislators," etc. etc. WITH EIGHT FULL-PAGE PLATES CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD. London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 1911 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED KING JOHN GRANTING MAGNA CHARTA From the Fresco in the Royal Exchange, by Ernest Normand. By permission of Messrs. S. Hildesheimer & Co., Ltd. PREFACE This short account of the rise of political democracy is necessarily but an outline of the matter, and while it is not easy to define the exact limits, there is no difficulty in noting omissions. For instance, there is scarcely any reference to the work of poets or pamphleteers. John Ball's rhyming letters are quoted, but not the poems of Langland, and the political songs of the Middle Ages are hardly mentioned. The host of political pamphleteers in the seventeenth century are excluded, with the exception of Lilburne and Winstanley, whose work deserves better treatment from posterity than it received from contemporaries. Defoe's vigorous services for the Whigs are unnoticed, and the democratic note in much of the poetry of Burns, Blake, Byron and Shelley is left unconsidered, and the influence of these poets undiscussed. The anti-Corn Law rhymes of Ebenezer Eliot, and the Chartist songs of Ernest Jones were notable inspirations in their day, and in our own times Walt Whitman and Mr. Edward Carpenter have been the chief singers of democracy. But a whole volume at least might be written on the part the pen has played in the struggle towards democracy. Again, there is no mention of Ireland in this short sketch. A Nationalist movement is not necessarily a democratic movement, and the Irish Nationalist Party includes men of very various political opinions, whose single point of agreement is the demand for Home Rule. In India and Egypt the agitation is for representative institutions. Ireland might, or might not, become a democracy under Home Rule—who can say? The aim of the present writer has been to trace the travelled road of the English people towards democracy, and to point out certain landmarks on that road, in the hope that readers may be turned to examine more closely for themselves the journey taken. For the long march teems with adventure and spirited enterprise; and, noting mistakes and failures in the past, we may surely and wisely, and yet with greater daring and finer courage, pursue the road, not unmindful of the charge committed to us in the centuries left behind. J.C. H AMPSTEAD, September, 1911. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION The British Influence—"Government of the People, by the People, for the People"—The Foundations of Democracy—British Democracy Experimental not Doctrinaire—Education to Democracy CHAPTER I THE EARLY STRUGGLES AGAINST THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWN The Great Churchmen—Archbishop Anselm and Norman Autocracy—Thomas à Becket and Henry II.—Stephen Langton and John—The Great Charter CHAPTER II THE BEGINNING OF PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION Democracy and Representative Government—Representative Theory First found in Ecclesiastical Assemblies—The Misrule of Henry III.—Simon of Montfort, Leader of the National Party—Edward I.'s Model Parliament, 1295 —The Nobility Predominant in Parliament—The Medieval National Assemblies —The Electors of the Middle Ages—Payment of Parliamentary Representatives—The Political Position of Women in the Middle Ages—No Theory of Democracy in the Middle Ages CHAPTER III POPULAR INSURRECTION IN ENGLAND General Results of Popular Risings—William FitzOsbert, 1196—The Peasant Revolt and its Leaders, 1381—Jack Cade, Captain of Kent, 1450—The Norfolk Rising under Ket, 1549 CHAPTER IV THE STRUGGLE RENEWED AGAINST THE CROWN Parliament under the Tudors—Victory of Parliament over the Stuarts—The Democratic Protest: Lilburne—Winstanley and "The Diggers"—The Restoration CHAPTER V CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT —ARISTOCRACY TRIUMPHANT Government by Aristocrats—Civil and Religious Liberty—Growth of Cabinet Rule—Walpole's rule—The Change in the House of Lords—"Wilkes and Liberty" CHAPTER VI THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA The Witness of the Middle Ages—The "Social Contract" Theory—Thomas Hobbes—John Locke—Rousseau and French Revolution—American Independence—Thomas Paine—Major Cartwright and the "Radical Reformers"—Thomas Spence—Practical Politics and Democratic Ideals CHAPTER VII PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AND THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE The Industrial Revolution—The Need for Parliamentary Reform —Manufacturing Centres Unrepresented in Parliament—The Passage of the Great Reform Bill—The Working Class still Unrepresented—Chartism—The Hyde Park Railings, 1866—Household Suffrage—Working-class Representation in Parliament—Removal of Religious Disabilities: Catholics, Jews and Freethinkers—The Enfranchisement of Women CHAPTER VIII DEMOCRACY AT WORK Local Government—The Workman in the House of Commons—Working-class Leaders in Parliament—The Present Position of the House of Lords—The Popularity of the Crown—The Democratic Ideals: Socialism and Social Reform —Land Reform and the Single Tax CHAPTER IX THE WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT : ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS East and West—Tyranny under Democratic Forms—The Obvious Dangers —Party Government—Bureaucracy—Working-Class Ascendancy—On Behalf of Democracy LIST OF PLATES KING JOHN GRANTING MAGNA C HARTA MAGNA C HARTA—A FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM SIR JOHN ELIOT JOHN H AMPDEN THE GORDON R IOTS THE R IGHT H ON. JOHN BURNS, M.P. THE R IGHT H ON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P. THE PASSING OF THE PARLIAMENT BILL IN THE H OUSE OF LORDS THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY INTRODUCTION THE B RITISH INFLUENCE Our business here is to give some plain account of the movement towards democracy in England, only touching incidentally on the progress of that movement in other parts of the world. Mainly through British influences the movement has become world wide; and the desire for national self-government, and the adoption of the political instruments of democracy—popular enfranchisement and the rule of elected representatives—are still the aspirations of civilised man in East and West. The knowledge that these forms of democratic government have by no means at all times and in all places proved successful does not check the movement. As the British Parliament and the British Constitution have in the past been accepted as a model in countries seeking free political institutions, so to-day our Parliament and our Constitutional Government are still quoted with approval and admiration in those lands where these institutions are yet to be tried. The rise of democracy, then, is a matter in which Britain is largely concerned; and this in spite of the fact that in England little respect and less attention has been paid to the expounders of democracy and their constructive theories of popular government. The notion that philosophers are the right persons to manage affairs of state and hold the reins of Government has always been repugnant to the English people, and, with us, to call a man "a political theorist" is to contemn him. The English have not moved towards democracy with any conscious desire for that particular form of government, and no vision of a perfect State or an ideal commonwealth has sustained them on the march. Our boast has been that we are a "practical" people, and so our politics are, as they ever have been, experimental. Reforms have been accomplished not out of deference to some moral or political principle, but because the abuse to be remedied had become intolerable. Dissatisfaction with the Government and the conviction that only by enfranchisement and the free election of representatives can Parliament remove the grounds of dissatisfaction, have carried us towards democracy. GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE We have been brought to accept Abraham Lincoln's famous phrase, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," as a definition of democracy; but in that acceptance there is no harking back to the early democracies of Greece or Rome, so beloved by the French democrats of the eighteenth century, who, however, knew very little about those ancient states —or any vain notion of restoring primitive Teutonic democracy. The sovereign assemblies of Greece—the Ecclesia of Athens, and the Apella of Sparta—the Comitia Centuriata of Rome, have no more resemblance to democracy in the twentieth century than the Witenagemot has to the British Parliament; and the democracy which has arisen in modern times is neither to be traced for its origin to Greece or Rome, nor found to be evolved from Anglo- Saxon times. The early democracies of Athens and Sparta were confined to small states, and were based on a slave population without civic rights. There was not even a conception that slaves might or should take part in politics, and the slaves vastly outnumbered the citizens. Modern democracy does not tolerate slavery, it will not admit the permanent exclusion of any body of people from enfranchisement; though it finds it hard to ignore differences of race and colour, it is always enlarging the borders of citizenship. So that already in the Australian Commonwealth, in New Zealand, in certain of the American States, in Norway, and in Finland, we have the complete enfranchisemen