DEMOCRACY (Gr. the rule of the people). It is interesting to trace the progress of this idea, which now plays so important a part. In Greece, whence we derive the name, it was understood to mean a commonwealth so constituted that the power was exercised by the body of the citizens (the demos), and not by an individual, or by a dominant caste. Democracy, therefore, stood opposed both to monarchy and aristocracy. Most of the republics of Greece, more especially that of Athens, were democracies in this sense. The name by no means implied the notion of an absolutely equal right in all citizens, still less in all men, to the exercise of political power. Neither the total absence of rights of all kinds on the part of the larger half of the population, the slaves, nor the distinctions recognized by law among citizens proper (e.g., the exclusion of the poorer citizens from office under the Solonian constitution at Athens), were considered incompatible with the nature of a democracy; though in regard to inequalities among citizens, the continually growing force of the democratic principle tended to their gradual extinction, and the transference of power to the mass of citizens without dis tinction. Aristotle regarded this as an encroachment of ochlocracy (mobocracy), the degenerate form of democracy, or democracy proper. Or more frequently, he speaks of democracy as the degenerate form of the' polity (Gr. politeia). The polity with him was the form where the many govern for the common benefit.—Polit. III. chap. 5, and IV. chap. 6.
In modern history, we meet at the very threshold a state of society which may be called democratic. Among the German nations, we find an almost perfect equality of all freemen (i.e., all that were not slaves), and real self-government exercised by these freemen in each separate tribe. For the personal distinction enjoyed by certain familieS gave them no privileges over the other freemen, and where royalty existed, it could hardly be said to rule, since the king could do nothing without the concurrence of the assembly of freemen, and reigned not by mere birthright, but required the confirmatory choice of the people.
This condition of general liberty and equality gave place gradually to one of a quite opposite kind. Through the growth of the feudal system (q.v.), the majority fell into a more or less abject dependence upon 'a privileged minority. The mass of former freemen, now sunk into serfdom, were hardly distinguishable from those properly slaves, whose position, on the contrary, was become less dependent. The dominant class, the nobility, branded all that did not belong to themselves as "people," "commonalty," "canaille." Thus the term "people," which in the ancient republics implied the rights of citizenship, came to denote the masses that were without rights. The distinction between the dominant class and the mass of the people rested chiefly on two points— exclusive occupation in war, and the free possession of land, which was granted for warlike service alone.
But within this system of graduated dependence, from the monarch down through the aristocracy and their retainers in various degrees, there sprang up slowly an oppos ing element, which, as originating in the mass called the people, we may designate as democratic. It was not so much a new element, as the resuscitation of the old Roman municipal life, which had never altogether become extinct. It was of course in the cities that this fresh element first manifested itself. Here, instead of a lord with a group of dependents; there arose communities of men with equal rights and self-govern ment. At the same time, a new material interest, that of movable property, the product of industry and commerce, began to claim recognition alongside of territorial posses sions and nobility. In England, as early as the Anglo-Saxon times, a merchant who had made three voyages ranked with a thane; and soon after the Norman conquest, the cities were represented in parliament on an equal footing with the warlike aristocracy. This took place later on the continent, and never to the same extent, except in the cities of Lombardy and Flanders, where, at an early period, the citizen element entered the lists with the feudal and warlike. Even within the cities, the same contest was
carried on between aristocracy and democracy. At first, it was only those carying on commerce on a large scale that asserted their right to take part in the municipal govern ment of the towns; but the trades or guilds soon set up the same claims. These claims were pertinaciously prosecuted. and often led to bloody contests, but sooner or later were everywhere victorious. Thus was the basis of democracy widened; although the guilds also did not fail to manifest an aristocratic and exclusive spirit towards the of the people not belonging to them, and with their restrictions and monopolies acted oppressively to the country population. It was not so easy for these last to break the i bonds of feudal subjection in which they were held, or to acquire any political standing. Isolated attempts to throW off the yoke, by peasant insurrections and wars, failed, an% only were followed by increased oppression. The abrupt division between the feudal possessor of the soil and the serfs under him continued long everywhere except in England. There the rigor of the relation began early to give way, and the transition was effected in such a peaceable and gradual way, that the English historian cannot say exactly how or when. For the greater part of the continent, it was not till the French revolution in 1789, and the impulse given by it to legislation in other countries, that the agricultural population acquired more or less complete freedom and equality with other classes, Thus had one part after another of that " people," so oppressed and contemptuously thrown into the background by the dominant class in the middle ages, emerged from bondage, and successfully asserted a participation of rights that were at one time the privileges of a single class. The aristocratic principle of feudal society, the principle of exclusion, privilege, of the subjection of the majority to a minority, had given way to the democratic principle of the equal rights of all classes, of all callings and employ ments. But the development of this last principle was not yet complete. Those who had made good a position in the state alongside of the feudal aristocracy, formed in their turn an exclusive class, taking their stand on certain material grounds. Thus, the merchants, as representing large masses of capital; the guilds, with their privileged industry; the agriculturists, as possessors of land, however little: all these interests formed, as it were, another aristocracy within the democracy. They were democratic in their origin, and as compared with the class that was at one time exclusively privi leged; but in another point of view they were aristocratic, since there still remained without a numerous body, which, instead of elevating to political power with them, they rather repelled, and treated much as the nobility had treated themselves. This residuary mass, which now came to be chiefly designated by the name "people," com prehended all those who possessed no capital, no privileged trade or calling, no land— nothing, in short, but their personal powers and capacities for work. This class forms at the present day by far the most numerous portion of the population in nearly all the civilized states of Europe. The designation " people," intended to be depreciative, is taken by them in the very opposite sense, and they round upon it their claim to rule the state, as being properly the people, the numerically strongest class of the com munity. The preference given to the class of possessors, they look upon as groundless and absurd, just as these had judged of the nobility; they therefore claim perfect equality with them, especially in the exercise of the highest political rights. It is from this point of view that universal suffrage and the rule of mere numbers, without regard to possessions or other conditions, has been proclaimed as a self-evident consequence of the democratic principle.