The Westminster Review Volume 108-109 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 Excerpt: ... of the popular will; and that, only after endless compromises with all sorts of class interests and personal claims, and all sorts of delays and obstructions, can the clearly ascertained wishes of the vast majority of the population obtain a stinted promise of partial satisfaction. We have never ignored the inherent dangers of democracy, and we should be the last to profess that an unbridled career of democracy afforded in itself any sufficient guarantees for personal liberty or general political improvement. Nor are we unaware of the special advantages which some of the elements of the English constitution and of English society present for the purpose of breaking or correcting the impetus of democratic progress, whenever or wherever that' impetus is to be feared. And it is also true that in England, as in other European countries, in spite of the inadequate system of I parliamentary representation, democracy, in its true sense of the actual intervention of the whole people in the affairs of government, igj through a variety of channels more or less direct, making rapid way. All we complain of is, the mischievous confusion which calls the checks and bridles of democracy the ideal of democracy itself, and which, glorifying all that which happens to exist, and is tolerable only because familiar, transmutes every social injustice and inequality, with which an ancient society like that of England is sure to abound, into so many achievements of political wisdom towards the end, not of resisting but of developing, and in fact inaugurating, a true democracy. The confusion is perhaps too patent to be really misleading, but in politics an otherwise pardonable looseness in the use of terms may, in the hands of the unthinking or unconscientious, some day lead to pra...