The Rise of the Democracy

CHAPTER VII. Parliamentary Reform and the Enfranchisement of the People

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AND THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE

The Industrial Revolution--The Need for Parliamentary Reform--Manufacturing Centres Unrepresented in Parliament--The Passage of the Great Reform Bill--The Working Class still Unrepresented--Chartism--The Hyde Park Railings, 1866--Household Suffrage--Working-class Representation in Parliament--Removal of Religious Disabilities: Catholics, Jews and Freethinkers--The Enfranchisement of Women

CHAPTER VIII. Democracy At Work

DEMOCRACY AT WORK

Local Government--The Workman in the House of Commons--Working-class Leaders in Parliament--The Present Position of the House of Lords--The Popularity of the Crown--The Democratic Ideals: Socialism and Social Reform--Land Reform and the Single Tax

CHAPTER IX. The World-Wide Movement: Its Strength and Weakness

THE WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT: ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS

East and West--Tyranny under Democratic Forms--The Obvious Dangers--Party Government--Bureaucracy--Working-Class Ascendancy--On Behalf of Democracy

LIST OF PLATES

KING JOHN GRANTING MAGNA CHARTA

MAGNA CHARTA--A FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

SIR JOHN ELIOT

JOHN HAMPDEN

THE GORDON RIOTS

THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURNS, M.P.

THE RIGHT HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P.

THE PASSING OF THE PARLIAMENT BILL IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS

THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY

INTRODUCTION

THE BRITISH INFLUENCE

Our business here is to give some plain account of the movement towards democracy in England, only touching incidentally on the progress of that movement in other parts of the world. Mainly through British influences the movement has become world wide; and the desire for national self-government, and the adoption of the political instruments of democracy--popular enfranchisement and the rule of elected representatives--are still the aspirations of civilised man in East and West. The knowledge that these forms of democratic government have by no means at all times and in all places proved successful does not check the movement. As the British Parliament and the British Constitution have in the past been accepted as a model in countries seeking free political institutions, so to-day our Parliament and our Constitutional Government are still quoted with approval and admiration in those lands where these institutions are yet to be tried.

The rise of democracy, then, is a matter in which Britain is largely concerned; and this in spite of the fact that in England little respect and less attention has been paid to the expounders of democracy and their constructive theories of popular government. The notion that philosophers are the right persons to manage affairs of state and hold the reins of Government has always been repugnant to the English people, and, with us, to call a man "a political theorist" is to contemn him. The English have not moved towards democracy with any conscious desire for that particular form of government, and no vision of a perfect State or an ideal commonwealth has sustained them on the march. Our boast has been that we are a "practical" people, and so our politics are, as they ever have been, experimental. Reforms have been accomplished not out of deference to some moral or political principle, but because the abuse to be remedied had become intolerable. Dissatisfaction with the Government and the conviction that only by enfranchisement and the free election of representatives can Parliament remove the grounds of dissatisfaction, have carried us towards democracy.

GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE

We have been brought to accept Abraham Lincoln's famous phrase, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," as a definition of democracy; but in that acceptance there is no harking back to the early democracies of Greece or Rome, so beloved by the French democrats of the eighteenth century, who, however, knew very little about those ancient states--or any vain notion of restoring primitive Teutonic democracy.

The sovereign assemblies of Greece--the Ecclesia of Athens, and the Apella of Sparta--the Comitia Centuriata of Rome, have no more resemblance to democracy in the twentieth century than the Witenagemot has to the British Parliament; and the democracy which has arisen in modern times is neither to be traced for its origin to Greece or Rome, nor found to be evolved from Anglo-Saxon times. The early democracies of Athens and Sparta were confined to small states, and were based on a slave population without civic rights. There was not even a conception that slaves might or should take part in politics, and the slaves vastly outnumbered the citizens. Modern democracy does not tolerate slavery, it will not admit the permanent exclusion of any body of people from enfranchisement; though it finds it hard to ignore differences of race and colour, it is always enlarging the borders of citizenship. So that already in the Australian Commonwealth, in New Zealand, in certain of the American States, in Norway, and in Finland, we have the complete enfranchisement of all men and women who are of age to vote.

Apart from this vital difference between a slave-holding democracy and a democracy of free citizens--a difference that rent the United States in civil war, and was only settled in America by democracy ending slavery--ancient democracy was government by popular assembly, and modern democracy is government through elected representatives. The former is only possible in small communities with very limited responsibilities--a parish meeting can decide questions of no more than strictly local interest; for our huge empires of to-day nothing better than representative government has been devised for carrying out the general will of the majority.

As for the early English Witenagemot, it was simply an assembly of the chiefs, and, though crowds sometimes attended, all but the great men were the merest spectators. Doubtless the folk-moot of the tribe was democratic, for all free men attended it, and the English were a nation of freeholders, and the slaves were few--except in the west--and might become free men. The shire-moot, too, with its delegates from the hundred-moots, was equally democratic. But with feudalism and the welding of the nation, tribal democracies passed away, leaving, however, in many places a valuable tradition of local self-government.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF DEMOCRACY

A steady and invincible belief that those who maintain the defence of the country and pay for the cost of government should have a voice in the great council of the nation, and the conviction that effective utterance can be found for that voice in duly chosen representatives, are the foundations on which democracy has built. Democracy itself comes in (1) when it is seen that all are being taxed for national purposes; and (2) the opinion finds acceptance that responsibilities of citizenship should be borne by all who have reached the age of manhood and are of sound mind.

To sketch the rise of democracy in England is to trace the steady resistance to kings who would govern without the advice of counsellors, and to note the growing determination that these counsellors must be elected representatives. Only when the absolutism of the Crown is ended and a Parliament of elected members has become the real centre of government, is it possible, without a revolution, for democracy to be established.

Much of this book is given up, then, to the old stories of kingly rule checked and slowly superseded by aristocracy. And all the old attempts at revolution by popular insurrection are again retold, not only because of the witness they bear to the impossibility in England of achieving democracy by the violent overthrow of government, but because they also bear witness to the heroic resolution of the English people to take up arms and plunge into a sea of troubles rather than bear patiently ills that were unseemly for men to endure in silence. Popular insurrection failed, but over and over again violence has been resorted to in the resistance to tyranny, and has been justified by its victory. If Wat Tyler, Jack Cade, and Robert Ket are known as beaten revolutionaries, Stephen Langton, Simon of Montfort, and John Hampden are acclaimed as patriots for not disdaining the use of armed resistance.

The conclusion is that a democratic revolution was not to be accomplished in England by a rising of the people, but that forcible resistance even to the point of civil war was necessary to guard liberties already won, or to save the land from gross misgovernment. But always the forcible resistance, when successful, has been made not by revolutionaries but by the strong champions of constitutional government. The fruit of the resistance to John was the Great Charter; of Simon of Montfort's war against Henry III., the beginning of a representative Parliament; of the war against Charles, the establishment of Parliamentary government. Lilburne and his friends hoped that the civil war and the abolition of monarchy would bring in democracy, though democracy was never in the mind of men like Hampden, who made the war, and was utterly uncongenial to Cromwell and the Commonwealth men. But the sanctity of monarchy received its death-blow from Cromwell, and perished with the deposing of James II.; and there has been no resurrection. To the Whig rule we owe the transference of political power from the Crown to Parliament. Once it is manifest that Parliament is the instrument of authority, that the Prime Minister and his colleagues rule only by the permission and with the approval of the House of Commons, and that the House of Commons itself is chosen by a certain number of electors to represent the nation, then it is plain that the real sovereignty is in the electors who choose the House of Commons. As long as the electors are few and consist of the great landowners and their satellites, then the constitutional government is aristocracy, and democracy is still to come.

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