Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE ERRORS OF DEMOCRACY The general feature of political development during this century in both the hemispheres may be correctly described as a constant ascendancy of the democracy. The word democracy must be here taken in its modern sense, that is, as standing for the non-aristocratic classes, including the lowest strata of society. Of purely democratic States there have been and are few examples. Though the United States have never passed through the ordeal of being governed by despots and oligarchies from their very birth, their liberation from British rule and their consequent development as a Republic may fairly be looked upon as a democratic development. In Europe there are only two States which may be said to have remained unaffected by the universal ascendancy of democracy—Russia and Turkey. There is only one State which from its birth has been organised on a democratic basis—Switzerland. In all other European States the democracy has gained power, while previously ruling dynasties and oligarchies have been either completely superseded or compelled to submit to constitutions. It is now just about a century since the great democratic upheaval took place in France, from which political reformers of the other continental States took their cue. Despite the fact that in Great Britain the middle-class, since the timeof Cromwell, have had a share in the government of their country, it is well-known history that the French Revolution reacted strongly on the progress of democracy in Great Britain. Hardly was the peace with France concluded when the Reform Bill agitation began, though the first reform itself did not take place till 1832. On the Continent the Napoleonic wars for a time quashed all ideas of political reform, but scarcely had the Congress of Vienna ...