Demagoguery

“ In this changing world, how soon is the mere demagogue forgotten? In his day, he impresses his retainers with the idea, that, unless some favorite theory is adopted, all is lost. It is exploded, he disappears from our sight, and the world moves on in safety. ”

“ The demagogue, the public disturber, the licensed hawker of small grievances, every briefless lawyer of bad fortune and worse language, every mendicant patriot that can minister to the passions of a people deserted by their natural protectors,—the day will come, my Lord, when these men will grow ambitious, their aspirings may become troublesome ”

“ This is the heyday of the demagogue, who tells the people—the poorer crowd—that they have a right to all the comforts and blessings of the State, and that their pleasures must not be curtailed while there are men of large property living in idle luxury. ”

“ To be living is sublime!"
We are moving out into a period of great statesmen, and of great political standards and ideals. The days before us are days which will make the Elizabethan era pale in history. Upon the head of our nation are set responsibilities such as have never before rested on any one man.
The day of the true statesman is here; the day of the demagogue is done! The rule of the orator is over the ideals and hopes of men. The demagogue prostitutes this power. His rule is over the passions, prejudices, and resentments of men. ”

“ The last decade has revealed signs that the demagogue, in the modern meaning of that word, is making his appearance in American civic life.
Such men always seize the most attractive "cause" as argument to the people for their support. They are quite as willing to pose as the especial apostles of righteousness and purity as they are to enact the character of the divinely appointed tribunes of patriotism. Whatever the political fashion of the day may be, your demagogue will appeal to it. ”

“ Attest it, thou goodly array of the tomes of Maga, laden and sparkling, now as ever, with wisdom and wit, science and fancy!—attest the unwavering fidelity of our career! All this is very true; but the secret annals of the good can never be free from temptations, and never are in reality unblotted by peccadilloes. The fury of the demagogue has been our laughing-stock—the versatility of trimming politicians, our scorn. We have crouched before none of the powers which have been, or be; neither have we been carried off our feet by the whirlwinds of popular passion. ”

“ He also dwelt on the part the demagogue and the incompetents play in retarding the advancement of the human race. Some leaders were honest, some were wise and some were selfish, but it was seldom that the people would be led by wise, honest and unselfish men.
“There is always the demagogue to poison the mind of the people against such a man,” he said, “and it is easily done because wisdom means moderation and honesty means truth. To be moderate and to tell the truth at all times and about all matters seldom pleases the masses.” ”

“ But the demagogue at least consults the mob as though it had a mind and will of its own. The very way in which he flatters it and instigates it to passion is an assertion of its freedom of choice, and, therefore, a concession to the dignity of human [Pg 96] nature. It is like wooing as compared with marriage by capture. ”

“ With the first gleam of their newly acquired power the people will reject these benefits; they will despise the slow-won fruits of industry as the gambler rejects a life of toil. Then will come a reaction—a terrible reaction—with all the semblance of black ingratitude! She will herself be disgusted. The breach once made will grow wider and wider, and at last the demagogue will take the place of the landed proprietor. Estrangement at first, next distrust, and finally dislike, will separate the gentry from the peasantry, and then—I tremble to think of what then! ”

“ He had not hesitated to wield the axe of reform with a yeoman's hand, and the flying chips told of the havoc he was making among the dead wood of ignorance and craft. It was his aim to demonstrate that a demagogue in the seat of power is no less a menace to the happiness of the people than an aristocrat. ”

“ Again, the oratory of a demagogue, if addressed to a large crowd, will raise angry emotion to a pitch of intensity far higher than any it will attain if he is heard by a few persons only; and this is due not only to accentuation of the emotion by sympathetic induction, but also to the fact that, as the symptoms of the emotion begin to be manifested on all sides, each man becomes aware that it pervades the crowd, that the crowd as a whole is swayed by the same emotion and the same impulse as he himself feels, that none remains to criticise the violence of his expressions. ”

“ The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management, instead of manifesting the frank, fearless qualities of the democracy he so prodigally professes.
The man who maintains the rights of the people on pure grounds, may be distinguished from the demagogue by the reverse of all these qualities. ”

“ You may study until you exhaust all these, and then seek the best in other lands. You may study thus until your hair is beginning to change its color, but this of itself will never make you a great orator. You may become a demagogue, and, if self-centred, you inevitably will; for this is exactly what a demagogue is,—a great demagogue, if you please, than which it is hard for one to call to mind a more contemptible animal, and the greater the more contemptible. But without laying hold of and building upon this great principle you never can become a great orator. ”

“ The demagogue is the man who, instead of aiming at bringing the mob to his mood, feels after the mood of the mob, and, having discovered it, whips it into froth and fury. If you keep your eyes open at a public meeting—not always an easy thing to do in days when men discuss Welsh Disestablishment—you will see how the demagogue often becomes the master of a meeting that has listened coldly to intelligent and honest speeches. ”

“ They represent the dissatisfied people, brought to the verge of frenzy by the wily arts of the demagogue; the howling mob, wanting only the kindling spark to flash into the flame of revolt; the maddened rabble, waiting for the master-spirit to spur them into open revolution. ”

“ But, withal, in these discontents there is a menace to the Republic. They afford the opportunity for the demagogue and the cheap candidate for public office. [Laughter and applause.] Glory to the American people! They cannot be fooled all the time, nor some of the time. They are too level-headed, too intelligent, too patriotic to be caught by appeals of the demagogue and the social revolutionist, to the dictates and sentiments of envy, hatred and malice. ”

“ If this continues to be the ruling passion of our souls, the weaker feeling of the mistaken enthusiast will be corrected, the Utopian dreams of the scheming politician dissipated, and the complicated intrigues of the demagogue rendered harmless. ”

“ Vandory, by whom the clergy of this district are wont to swear, votes with the notary."
"He is a demagogue, I am told."
"No; I do not think that name applies to him. The principles, which demagogues make tools of, are the grand aim and end of his life. In short, he is half a century in advance of his age."
"The worse for him, he'll scarcely live to see the day of general enlightenment. Men of his stamp are most dangerous."
"Hardly so. Men of strong convictions are for the most part isolated. They want the power to do harm, for they have no party. ”

“ The demagogue at least is obliged to hold out conquests and luxury to them, then perlaps he may encounter faith. They will always obey and more than obey, provided they may at the same time get intoxicated. ”

“ I have nothing to appeal to but the good sense of the people. A death's head and cross bones were not blazoned on my banners.'
He called the great demagogue a 'big beggarman,' who gathered 'rint' from the wretched Irish peasantry by promising to procure a 'repale' for them, which he knew he should never get. ”

“ The more intelligent and wealthy class have it in their power so to mould this change as to render it peaceful, gradual and universally beneficent; or they can turn a deaf ear to the calls of humanity, and let the demagogue, the envious, the selfishly discontented, pervert it into an engine of convulsion, destruction and desolation. ”

“ Treachery, cowardice, looting, any indignity to women, he punished with death; but to the wounded, either of his own or of the enemy's forces, he was as gentle as a nursing sister and the brave and able he rewarded with instant promotion and higher pay. In no one trait was he a demagogue. One can find no effort on his part to ingratiate himself with his men. ”

“ The demagogue perceives their ominous sullenness, and marks the hatred which is rankling in their hearts—then the parties of the rich and the poor are formed—then come the legislative plunder and the dark train of evils consequent on the spirit of equality, which is in fact, in such a community, the spirit of agrarianism. ”

“ This, to the philosophic and close observer of human nature and human life, is cause of more amusement than alarm. For certainly it is cause of rejoicing and thanksgiving to see demagogues of any kind tripping up each other’s heels. And give me many demagogues, or give me none: one may destroy a country—many destroy each other. ”

“ The city seemed to cry: "I need a friendly monitor—one who will point me out the decencies and compel me to adopt them." The demagogue who had ruled and misruled before had been reëlected once or twice, and the newspapers were still indulging their familiar strain of irresponsible and ineffective criticism. The dark world behind him had become more populous and bold, and the forces for good still seemed unable to organize and coöperate toward making betterment an actuality. ”

“ It is when the rich and well-educated and highly-privileged classes neglect their duties, when they neglect to study the interests, and conciliate the affections, and instruct the opinions, and champion the rights of the people, that the latter become discontented and turbulent, and fall into the hands of demagogues: the demagogue always steps in, where the patriot is wanting. There is a common high-handed cant among the high-feeding, and, as they fancy themselves, high-minded men, about putting down the mob ”

“ I am not certain whether the latter are not to be most dreaded of the two, for those who make a trade of the confidence of the people seldom fail to corrupt them—they find it more profitable to flatter their passions than to enlighten their understandings; and a demagogue of this kind, who obtains an office by exciting one popular insurrection, will make no scruple of maintaining himself in it by another. ”

“ It is this which keeps the minds of a multitude in a constant state of irritation, and which, when the base demagogue seeks to array the poor against the rich, collects the crowd of his willing auditors, and arms him with his dreaded power. ”

“ But these causes themselves are ultimately traceable to a deeper and simpler one: the recklessness of the demagogue, the immorality of the middle class, and the effeminacy and treachery of the noble, are traceable in all these nations to the commonest and most fruitful cause of calamity in households—idleness. ”

“ One might judge those opaque, impassive eyes as cruel; might feel the strength relentless as a Juggernaut. But whether he were appraised demagogue, plutocrat, or patriot, the sense of an indomitable will, a boundless patience, remained. ”

“ Let this attempt on property succeed, ever so indirectly, AND IT WILL BE FOLLOWED UP BY OTHERS, WHICH WILL AS INEVITABLY DRIVE US INTO DESPOTISM, AS A REFUGE AGAINST ANARCHY, AS EFFECT SUCCEEDS TO CAUSE. The danger exists, now, in its very worst form—that of political demagogueism—and must be met, face to face, and put down manfully, and on true principles, or, in my poor judgment, we are gone. ”

“ Republics have always been fruitful of demagogues. Such vermin find the soil of democratic government the most fertile and congenial for their operations, because the audiences to which they speak, the passions to which they appeal, are not always of the most reflective, humane or enlightened. Demagogues are the parasites of republics; and that our country is afflicted with an abnormal number of them is to be expected from the tentative nature of our institutions, the extent of our territory and the heterogeneity of our vast population. ”

“ That it was a higher honor to be governed in a republic like ours, than to live in any other country?
"Every human being begins life under control and there is not one in a thousand that ever should live, only under control. Three-fourths of the people in this world never knew they were counted until they get into a mob.
"The demagogues array their hearers against wealth. They leave the impression that all who are so fortunate as to possess a little more of this world's goods than the poorest, are dishonest; that it is dishonorable to be of the moneyed class. ”

“ Were it practicable, by any salutary expedient, to enable the humble and laborious to perceive for themselves, that the enjoyments and habits of the rich are not necessarily antagonist to their own, it would at once paralyze the strength of the demagogue and the incendiary. ”

“ To a new society, ignorant and semi-barbarous, a mass of demagogues insisted on applying every stimulant that could inflame its worst appetites, while at the same instant taking away every influence that had hitherto helped to restrain its passions. ”