Populus

“ Look at our Parliament—a hurdy-gurdy turning out, age after age, a sing-song of pigmy regulations, accompanied for grum kettledrum by a musketry of suicides, and for pibroch by a European bleating of little children. We are still a million miles from civilization! For what is a civilized society? ”

“ Must the wise, the virtuous and worthy part of the community, who constituted a very great majority, surrender their liberty, and involve their posterity in misery, in complaisance to a detestable, though small, party of knaves, and a despicable, though more numerous, company of fools? ”

“ People of every origin, rank, and calling, I may almost say of every variety of opinion,—great noblemen, magistrates, advocates, ecclesiastics, men of letters, fashion, or business, members of the old aristocracy, of the Constituent Assembly, of the Convention, of the Empire,—lived in easy and hospitable intercourse, adopting without hesitation their altered positions and views, and all apparently disposed to act together in goodwill for the advantage of their country. ”

“ So far, however, from the excesses of the populace—at least, in the first years of the Revolution—being a surprise to us, it should more properly be a surprise that, as a rule, they evinced as much good-feeling and tolerance as they did! ”

“ By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.... ”

“ Whilst the barons, the bishops, the popes, thus tore to pieces the land where each wished to rule, the people, the most useful and even the most virtuous part of a community of men, composed of those who study laws and sciences, of merchants, artisans, lastly of labourers, who exercise the first and most despised of callings—the people, I say, were regarded by them as animals below man. ”

“ They are the pillars of the commonwealth, the real peers of the realm, the chief bulwark of our political and social state amid the horde of base, corrupt intriguers and demagogues, mammon worshippers and spendthrifts, crowding our legislative halls and marts of business, and flaunting in vulgar show through our streets. ”

“ But where reverence to the gods, succour of parents, respect to elders, obedience to laws, are traditional and habitual, in such communities, if the will of the majority prevail, we may speak of the form of government as a democracy. So then we enumerate six forms of government,—the three commonly spoken of which I have just mentioned, and three more allied forms, I mean despotism, oligarchy and mob-rule. ”

“ Behold a republic increasing in population, in wealth, in strength and in influence, solving the problems of civilization and hastening the coming of an universal brotherhood—a republic which shakes thrones and dissolves aristocracies by its silent example and gives light and inspiration to those who sit in darkness. ”

“ You must accept facts, and these are facts. The world for the Crowd! The Crowd as Ruler! Even in your days that creed had been tried and condemned. To-day it has only one believer—a multiplex, silly one—the man in the Crowd. ”

“ Republics abound in young civilians, who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living, and employments of the population, that commerce, education, and religion, may be voted in or out ”

“ Not only do they, being all connected with one another, approve and justify the acts and the activities of one another,—the emperors and kings, the acts of the soldiers, the officials, and the clergy; and the military, the officials, and the clergy, the acts of the emperors, the kings, and one another,—the popular crowd, especially the city crowd, which sees no comprehensible meaning in everything which is being done by these men, involuntarily ascribes a special, almost a supernatural significance to them. ”

“ A civilization by numbers, a crowd civilization, if it had not been started by heroes, could never have been started at all. Shall this civilization attempt to live by the crowd principle, without men in it who are living by the hero principle? On our answer to this question hangs the question whether this civilization, with all its crowds, shall stand or fall among the civilizations of the earth. ”

“ The two omnipresent parties of History, the party of the Past and the party of the Future, divide society to-day as of old. Here is the innumerable multitude of those who accept the state and the church from the last generation, and stand on no argument but possession. ”

“ A crowd would at once lose its character of a crowd were it to credit its leaders with their services, whether of a party nature or rendered their country. The crowd that obeys a leader is under the influence of his prestige, and its submission is not dictated by any sentiment of interest or gratitude. ”

“ In the eyes of reason, governments and parties are merely the mise en scène of the fundamental concepts of society, a realization of abstractions, a metaphysical pantomime, from which the direction is Liberty. ”

“ I intreat all Sects, Factions, and Distinctions of Men among us, to lay aside for a Time their Party-feuds and petty Animosities, and by a warm Concurrence on this urgent Occasion, teach Posterity to sacrifice every private Interest to the Advantage of their Country. ”

“ I looked over the shoulders of some, and saw poems and novels, politics, history, divinity, and every other undertaking.
Leaving the authors, and advancing farther into the valley of lost labour, I saw a crowd of young men, who with much energy were throwing their bodies into many different postures. At first I could not imagine the purpose of this peculiar diligence, but soon discovered that these young men were in the practice of oratory, and that all the strange attitudes I saw were for parliament. ”

“ The noblesse, and the policy of the central government receive adequate treatment, while the story of the lower classes, the traders, parish priests, peasants, burghers, cossacks, and serfs, their life, customs, local government, religion, and the great national movements which affect them, is told in detail and in the light of a full knowledge derived from long residence among them. ”

“ You see the state is an eternal riddle—'pivotal,' as the saying goes—the mother of parties, the devotee of none; and there lies half its fascination for the politician—I might say for the statesman. What passes for mere politics here might well figure as statesmanship elsewhere. ”

“ During the recess numerous volunteers meet in various parts of the country, write in public journals, interchange their ideas, explode many crotchets, find some that will stand the wear and tear of discussion, prepare, on all tenable views of a question, that mysterious and spiritual, but very real, power called Public Opinion, and so clear the field for action. ”

“ And so, out of my experience both in city and country, I feel—yes, I know—that the real motive power of this democracy lies back in the little country neighbourhoods like ours where men gather in dim schoolhouses and practice the invisible patriotism of surrender and service. ”

“ When the citizen simply does his duty in the place where he stands, the boss will be eliminated, in the nation, in the State, in the town, and we shall have, what by courtesy we say we have now, a government by the people. Then all the way down from the capital to the city ward, we shall have vital popular government, free action, discussion, agitation, life. ”

“ Not to know the difference between a people and a multitude, prepares to sedition. 8. In the last place, it is a great hindrance to civil government, especially monarchical, that men distinguish not enough between a people and a multitude. The people is somewhat that is one, having one will, and to whom one action may be attributed; none of these can properly be said of a multitude. The people rules in all governments. For even in monarchies the people commands; for the people wills by the will of one man; but the multitude are citizens, that is to say, subjects. ”

“ I met quick-witted townspeople who had been more or less used to political activity and were acquainted with the current language of political discussion, and who would promptly grasp the point of an argument or the catch-words or battle-cries of party and instantly respond with applause or signs of disapproval. ”

“ Coming, as you commanded, to observe and report the social state of the metropolis of a people who, in the presence of the world, have renounced the feudal organization of society, I have found them, as you anticipated, totally free from the petty ambitions, the bitter resolves, and the hollow pretences, that characterize the society of older states. ”

“ But those who are most afraid, or most decidedly aristocrates, subjoin to their registers, "All good republicans:" or, "Vive la republique, une et indivisible." ["The republic, one and indivisible for ever!"] Some likewise, who are in public offices, or shopkeepers who are very timid, and afraid of pillage, or are ripe for a counter-revolution, have a sheet half the size of the door, decorated with red caps, tri-coloured ribbons, and flaming sentences ending in "Death or Liberty!" ”

“ In one part of the country—and that the greater in numbers, in wealth, in enterprise and vigor, in average intelligence and intellectual achievements—the sentiments he had espoused were professed and believed by a great party which prided itself upon its intelligence, purity, respectability, and devotion to principle. ”

“ In the church, eloquence, entreaty, appeal, personal character and example of the pleader are added to the belief on both sides in God, conscience, divine reward and retribution. Political parties hold their voters together by the arts and arguments of the politician, his sincerity, convincingness, judicious use of party shibboleths, or confusion of issues. ”

“ A civilization with sovereign men in it has a sovereign God; and a crowd civilization, reflecting its mood on the heavens, is inclined to a pleasant, large-minded God, eternally considering everybody and considering everything, but inefficient withal, a kind of legislature of Deity, typical of representative institutions at their best and at their worst. ”

“ In the church, men ask—"Shall authority—a book or an institution, each an accident of human history — ^prevail over reason, conscience, the affections, and the soul—the human substance?" In the State, the minority looks for the eternal principles of Right ; and will not heed the bidding of famous men, of conventions, and majorities; appeals to the still, small voice within, which proclaims the Higher Law of God. Even in the North a great contest goes on. ”

“ Every people, therefore, which consists of such an association of the entire multitude as I have described, every city which consists of an assemblage of the people, and every commonwealth which embraces every member of these associations, must be regulated by a certain authority, in order to be permanent. ”

“ That remarkable property of human nature—the anxiety everybody is under that all other people should be virtuous—had worked itself out in sundry famous acts of parliament, general assembly, and town-council, throughout our history subsequent to the Reformation. ”

“ I believe that crowds can produce, and are bound to produce by a natural crowd-process, a real aristocracy—an aristocracy which will be truly aristocratic and noble in spirit and action, and which will express the best ideas in the best way that a crowd can have.
The main business of a democracy is to find out which these people are in it and put them where they will represent it. The trouble seems to have been in democracies so far, that we find out who these people are a generation too late. ”

“ The multitude, the unrepresented multitude, being the legislature, governed all things, and were themselves governed by their orators; who therefore swarmed in that city, and filled all the great offices in it, as they always will do in such a state. They would never suffer any thing to remain fixed and quiet ”

“ A true republic, the function of which is administration in the interests of the whole community—in contrast to a pure democracy, which in last analysis is the rule of the demos or a majority in its own interests—should be, and often is, the medium of selection for the technical task of government of those best qualified by antecedents, character and education, in short, of experts. ”

“ In small states, opinion is concentrated and strong—every eye reads your actions—your public motives are blended with your private ties—every spot in your narrow sphere is crowded with forms familiar since your childhood—the applause of your citizens is like the caresses of your friends. ”

“ The members of those illustrious states, from the habit of considering themselves as part of a community, or at least as deeply involved with some order of men in the state, were regardless of personal considerations: they had a perpetual view to objects which excite a great ardour in the soul; which led them to act perpetually in the view of their fellow citizens, and to practise those arts of deliberation, elocution, policy, and war, on which the fortunes of nations, or of men, in their collective body, depend. ”

“ You are to understand, that the Representatives on mission, who describe the inhabitants of all the towns they visit as glowing with republicanism, have, besides the service of the common cause, views of their own, and are often enabled by these fictions to administer both to their interest and their vanity. ”

“ But the only restraints that can be brought to bear upon the exercise of power, be it the power of the one, of the many, or of the multitude, are to be found in the religious institutions of a country. ”

“ Then, in view of what I have just called to your attention, does it occur to you that the leaders—or the should-be-leaders of my people of this city, are indicating, by their actions, that they care a hang what becomes of the race? ”