Democratic republic

“ And, lastly, we believe in the success, the glory, and the splendid destiny of this great Republic. It leaped into life from the hands of Democrats. More than three-quarters of a century it has been nurtured and strengthened by Democratic rule. ”

“ Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864. The happening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, is indeed most strange. The democratic republic has paid her today the terrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all the nations of the world that her union should be broken, her future cut off, and that she should be compell'd to descend to the level of kingdoms and empires ordinarily great. ”

“ Can men educated to an attachment for despotic government, and whose interests are bound up with its maintenance, be expected to look with favor on democratic principles, or become the champions of a republic? ”

“ The democratic Republic exults in the fact that it has, against the expectations of its enemies, conducted a great civil war to a successful result. A far heavier strain on democratic-republican self-government lies in the questions now impending: can we ward off subsidy-schemers? can we correct administrative abuses? can we purify the machinery of elections? ”

“ But the genius of true democracy will arise from his slumber, and rebuke the winds and the raging of the water, and say unto them—“Where is your faith?” Aye, where is the faith that led the Fathers of this Republic to invite the weary and burdened of all nations to the enjoyment of equal rights? Where is that broad and generous confidence in the efficiency of true democratic institutions? Has the present generation forgotten that true democracy bears in itself the remedy for all the difficulties that may grow out of it? ”

“ It is this Democratic doctrine of true liberty that has been the great curse of the Republic. It has poisoned our political life by leading the popular mind into channels of vicious logic, and debauching the hearts of the multitude with its artful defense of wrong. It has made man the enemy of man, and thus produced an irrepressible conflict. ”

“ The Monarchists say, “Our Monarchy is a Democratic Monarchy: therefore it differs essentially{3} from the ancient Monarchy, and is adapted to the modern condition of society.”
The Republicans say, “The Republic is Democracy governing itself. This is the only form of government in harmony with a democratic society, its principles, its sentiments, and its interests.”
Socialists, Communists, and Montagnards require that the republic should be a pure and absolute democracy. ”

“ We, the representatives of the Democratic Party of the United States, assembled in national convention, on the anniversary of the adoption of the declaration of independence, do reaffirm our faith in that immortal proclamation of the inalienable rights of man, and our allegiance to the constitution framed in harmony therewith by the fathers of the republic. ”

“ The August Revolution has recovered sovereignty for the nation and freedom for the people and set up the democratic republican regime. After eighty years of struggle, the Vietnamese nation has cast off the colonial yoke and subsequently overthrown the monarchic regime. ”

“ The inalienable right to liberty in all mankind forbids the right of anarchy in any of mankind; and the question of woman suffrage, strange as it may appear, actually narrows itself down, as it seems to me, to the question whether we shall have democracy or anarchy. Democratic government is at an end when those who issue decrees are not identical with those who can enforce those decrees. ”

“ In early historic times, also, it was only royal or gentle blood that secured for woman political power. Athena was, in gentle Athens, patroness of household arts; but in Sparta, as Minerva, the same divinity was goddess, not of political interests, as Mrs. Dietrick puts it, but of war. She sprang full-armed from the head of Jove—rather a masculine origin, it must be owned. In Sparta women became soldiers as the democratic idea advanced. ”

“ In general, every change in the constitution of a free State makes it more democratic; every [Pg 238] change in local law is for democracy, not against it. We have broken with the old feudal tradition,—broken forever with that. ”

“ The manifest, the avowed difficulty is that democracy, no less than monarchy or aristocracy, sacrifices everything to maintain itself, and strives, with an energy and a plausibility that kings and nobles cannot attain, to override representation, to annul all the forces of resistance and deviation, and to secure, by Plebiscite, Referendum, or Caucus, free play for the will of the majority. The true democratic principle, that none shall have power over the people, is taken to mean that none shall be able to restrain or to elude its power. ”

“ Accordingly aristocratic rule, the government of the Few in any of its shapes, being in his eyes the only thing which stood between mankind and an administration of their affairs by the best wisdom to be found among them, was the object of his sternest disapprobation, and a democratic suffrage the principal article of his political creed, not on the ground of liberty, Rights of Man, or any of the phrases, more or less significant, by which, up to that time, democracy had usually been defended, but as the most essential of “securities for good government.” ”

“ It is not to be expected there should be any partial bias to those liberal principles of democratic government where a monarch is enthroned with all the powers of despotism in his hands, a parliament at command to enforce his mandates, and a people ready to relinquish their own will to the caprice or pride of a sovereign. ”

“ It is in the nature of liberties and rights, abstractly considered, to be insubordinate and to conflict both one with another and, perhaps, with the common weal. If the chief purpose of a democratic political system is merely the preservation of such rights, democracy becomes an invitation to local, factional, and individual ambitions and purposes. ”

“ If peace and unanimity are cherished, and the equalization of liberty, and the equity and energy of law maintain by harmony and justice, the present representative government may stand for ages, a luminous monument of republican wisdom, virtue, and integrity. ”

“ We have next to consider how far it is possible so to organize the democracy as, without interfering materially with the characteristic benefits of democratic government, to do away with these two great evils, or at least to abate them in the utmost degree attainable by human contrivance. ”

“ To men for whom the word “democracy” is the synonym of overthrow, spoliation, anarchy, and murder, I have endeavored to prove that it was possible for democracy to govern society, and yet to respect property, to recognize rights, to spare liberty, to honor religion; that if democratic government is less fitted than other forms to develop some of the finest faculties of the human soul, it has yet its noble and its lovely features ”

“ What are the most cherished institutions of the Great Republic? If the intelligent foreigner were asked what were the fundamental principles which, guaranteed by, and guaranteeing, their Constitution, the people of the United States admired the most, he would probably reply, “Universal suffrage (with its incidental exercise of vote by ballot) , free citizenship, a free press.” ”

“ Are there no party contests stirring the popular mind to its very depth? And now, in the freest of all countries, where the people in the largest sense are called to govern themselves, where the people owe so much to their democratic institutions and are said to be so proud of them, here there should not be patriotism and public spirit enough, here it should require the sordid allurement of spoils and plunder to inspire the citizens with an active interest in their own affairs? ”

“ The principle of local option, which is nothing but that of direct government by the people, is being everywhere accepted. All these changes affect, fundamentally, the historic structure of our government, making it less republican and more democratic. ”

“ The pivot of my politics is a whole-hearted belief in the principles of Democracy. I mean by this, not devotion to certain abstract principles or views of communal life which have had placed upon them the label "Democratic," but a belief in the justice, the convenience, and the necessity of ascertaining and loyally abiding by the lawfully-expressed Will of the Majority of the People. ”

“ If the voters of the party were in truth the source of authority within the party, then a means had to be devised of ascertaining their will. The democratic principle, in short, had to be applied to party. ”

“ With us the governing class is always saying to itself, "What laws shall we make?" In a purely democratic state it would be always saying, "What laws can we obey?" A purely democratic state perhaps there has never been. ”

“ Democratic states aim at administration, not at domination; they are states without dynasties; the so-called constitutional monarchy is a transitional form, a mixture of aristocracy and democracy.
Democracy is the antithesis of aristocracy and oligarchy; monarchy is a form of oligarchy. ”

“ But when the democracy is supreme, there is no One or Few strong enough for dissentient opinions and injured or menaced interests to lean upon. The great difficulty of democratic government has hitherto seemed to be, how to provide in a democratic society—what circumstances have provided hitherto in all the societies which have maintained themselves ahead of others—a social support, a point d'appui, for individual resistance to the tendencies of the ruling power; a protection, a rallying-point, for opinions and interests which the ascendant public opinion views with disfavor. ”

“ But though we may be proud of these conquests, we are compelled in the last analysis of our institutions, to return to a few fundamental notions of our government. We must continue the representative idea based upon the doctrine of the equality of rights and exercised by representative assemblies founded on popular elections; and after our most pleasing contemplation of the institutions of America, we must return to the people, the foundation of our government. Their wisdom and self-control, and these alone, will impart to our institutions that strength which insures their perpetuity. ”

“ And you still call yourselves Democrats, and claim the confidence of the people by your fidelity to the great principle that popular liberty and free institutions must be secured by a strict limitation of the powers of government! ”

“ But that glorious struggle in which your destinies were pledged in common with the illustrious characters of that day, has eventually proved that a system of government, now in the history of the world, a confederative representative democracy, is the best guarantee for the liberties of a great people, is now confirmed by the experience of thirty-six years. ”

“ It is our business to lay down certain principles and propositions of policy, and we have to present to the suffrage of the people, men for the highest offices of the Republic, who, if elected, are to carry those principles and propositions into a living reality. ”

“ The people will, if the Democratic leaders do not, appreciate the greatness and beneficence of the idea upon which the new order of things, the settlement we propose, rests—true and general self-government exercised in and through the States ”

“ To imagine another contingency, perhaps more likely to be realised than the one last mentioned. There is confessedly a strong tendency in the modern world towards a democratic constitution of society, accompanied or not by popular political institutions. ”

“ Finally, when the state becomes a democratic organisation and co-operates with the individual in all spheres of his activity, the movement for political democracy has ripened and has produced its natural social fruits. ”

“ But the Democratic party should be the last to do so, if it is to deserve the name it bears; for civil service reform is, in its field, the perfect realization of the true democratic principle.
The truest definition of democratic government is furnished by Abraham Lincoln's famous saying that it is “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”: of the people, for the people constitute the sovereignty from which it springs; by the people, for the people through their chosen representatives and servants conduct it ”

“ Hence it is that an effective increase in national coherence looks in the direction of the democratic consummation—of the morally and intellectually authoritative expression of the Sovereign popular will. ”

“ I am for a free State, whether under a constitutional hereditary sovereign like the English or Belgian, or whether, republican in name, it be less democratic than constitutional monarchy in practice, like the American. But as a man interested in the fate of le Sens Commun, I hold in profound disdain all crotchets for revolutionising the elements of Human Nature. ”

“ Are we to answer, like Bismarck, that the "true people is an invisible multitude of spirits—the nation of yesterday and of to-morrow"? Such an answer seems scarcely fair to living people of to-day. On the other hand, can we reply that the Sovereign people is constituted by any chance majority which happens to obtain control of the government, and that the decisions and actions of the majority are inevitably and unexceptionally democratic? Such an assertion of the doctrine of popular Sovereignty would bestow absolute Sovereign authority on merely a part of the people. ”

“ The tendency in every respect was to multiply elections and elective officials, divide responsibility and power, and destroy independence. The more "democratic" these constitutions became, the more clearly the Democracy showed its disposition to distrust its own representatives, and to deprive them of any chance of being genuinely representative. ”