Demagogy

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why is it that the very bases of society have been sapped, and the conditions of good government despised, or denounced under the name of despotism? Why is it that social and political life is poisoned in its source, and the blood of the nation corrupted? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This, to the philosophic and 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. ”

“ We are meeting again the oldest and the strongest political plea of the demagogue, so often shown to be the most fallacious and dangerous doctrine that has ever appeared among men, that the people are infallible and can do no wrong, that their cry must be taken as the voice of God, and that whatever at any time seems to be the will of the majority, however ignorant and prejudiced, must be accepted as gospel. ”

“ You are afraid of demagogism and political intrigue! Bring demagogism to the test of free discussion, and it will soon unmask itself, and intrigue has lost its life-element, when in the open light of day argument struggles with argument.
But you may say that fanaticism and demagogism, if armed with the power of speech, may pervert the popular mind, and in appealing to the passions or the imagination of the multitude mislead their reason. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such a study would tend to remedy the great evil of democratic institutions, the susceptibility of the masses to the influence of demagogues, and their liability to misconstrue the relations of cause and effect because of ignorance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If there be, or ever shall be, in this country, a demos, fickle, light-minded, easily moved, blind, prejudiced, incapable of permanent adherence to what is great or what is true, whether it come from the effeminacy of wealth or the scepticism of a sickly and selfish culture, or the poverty and ignorance of great cities, it will find itself powerless in this iron grasp. ”

“ From a Democracy to a Tyranny is an easy stage. Some demagogue, who has shown unusual talent in extorting money from the richer class to feed those "stinging and stingless drones" of whom we spoke, is adopted by the people as their champion, and gradually strengthens his influence. ”

“ The stormy passions of the fury-driven mob, reckless and headstrong, show this; and the most terrible moment in all political convulsions is when the people feel, or even suspect, that they have been tricked. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Political demagogues will be cast aside as unfit for public confidence, and better and more patriotic men will spring up from among the masses who will have before them the history of the troubles through which their country has passed as lesson and a warning to shun a like calamity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It exposes us, by the scandalous spectacle of its periodical spoils carnivals, to the ridicule and contempt of civilized mankind, promoting among our own people the growth of serious doubts as to the practicability of democratic institutions on a great scale, and in an endless variety of ways it introduces into our political life more elements of demoralization, debasement and decadence than any other agency of evil I know of, aye, perhaps more than all other agencies of evil combined. ”

“ Every word of the great man's voice rang with the ruthless arrogance of his power. "I can make or mar any man or any business. I've fought the demagogues of labor and driven 'em out of town. I've fought the demagogues of politics and killed them off. And you think with your little spewing demagoguery of newspaper filth, you can override me? You think because you've got your father's quack millions behind you, that you can stand up to me?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the Revolution had been in every respect prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims to our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock with the slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous rust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the demagogues, and the re-establishment of successive tyrannies in France, was terrible, and felt in the remotest corner of the civilised world. ”

“ The influence of a large and constantly increasing class of demagogues, possessed of knowledge of human nature and endowed with skill in the management of men, yet entirely lacking in principle, patriotism, or any sense of public obligation. ”

“ The dissension in the community was reflected in the ranks of the opposition. Resting on the support of the farmers, the patriots raised a loud cry for reform; resting on the support of the mob in the capital, demagogism began its work. ”

“ The motive of the demagogue may usually be detected in his conduct. The man who is constantly telling the people that they are unerring in judgment, and that they have all power, is a demagogue. Bodies of men being composed of individuals, can no more be raised above the commission of error, than individuals themselves, and, in many situations, they are more likely to err, from self-excitement and the division of responsibility. ”

“ There is obviously no need, on the present occasion at least, to extend this catalogue of the political delinquencies of this would-be demagogue, whom we may accordingly leave gibbeted and swinging in the winds of the fools' paradise! an object of derision and contempt to those at least who maintain that integrity of purpose and consistency ought not altogether to be discarded from public life. ”

“ There could not be a greater outrage committed on any community than to place over them, contrary to their choice, corrupt demagogues to rule their destiny. The idea of forcing these corrupt dogs on a community to rule it is what I call dogmatism. ”

“ Such have been the consequences to the people of listening to the voice of their demagogues, who impelled them into the revolution of 1848—to the national guards, of hanging back at the decisive moment, and forgetting their oaths in the intoxication of popular enthusiasm. ”

“ The business of the nation was performed promptly, faithfully and effectually. Posts of honor were then posts of duty—not of profit. No demagogue bipeds were permitted to fatten at the public crib—no droning sinecures were lounging under the mantle of government. How changed the scene—how fearful the contrast at the present writing! Awake! patriots of my beloved country to a sense of our true interests. Throw off the incubus of ultra party spirit—think, know and act for yourselves—avoid the paralyzing touch of reckless demagogues and purge our land from political corruption. ”