With this there is connected in many quarters a still further extension of the idea. The same principles, it is said, that have dictated political reformations, call for a remodeling of the social arrangements of mankind; that the possessors of property, the bourgeoisie, ought to be deprived, not only of the political privileges they have hitherto en joyed, but also wholly or in part of the material basis of those privileges, their property, so as to produce a perfect equality, political, material, and social, of all classes. This gives rise to a division of the democrats of the present day into two parties: the purely democratic party, aiming only at securing the political consequences of the democratic principle—universal suffrage, and the absolute equality of social rights; and the "dem ocratic and social," who look upon the attainment of political rights as only a means of ultimately securing the general social equality of men.
There seems, however, to be a fundamental error in thus treating the relation between the possessionless class and the possessors as analogous to that between the serfs and lords of feudalism. The contest of democracy against feudalism was not primarily so much for equal rights as for this, that among the same people mere birth should not make one man privileged, and a ruler; another destitute of all rights, and bound to obey. It was a contest for personal freedom, the right for every man to use his powers for his own behoof, and not for that of a master; the right to the free possession of land, etc. Participation in political rights was chiefly prized as a guarantee for securing this personal and social liberty. Now, there is no such absolute distinction between possessors of property and non-possessors, as between the nobleman and roturier of the middle ages; the two classes run imperceptibly into one another. Still less does the one class exercise any right of controlling the personal freedom of the other in respect of labor and acquisition, as was the case in villenage and feudal servitude. Possession has endless gradations, and in the present day, he who had nothing at the outset often becomes a capitalist, and the reverse. There may be other reasons for wishing that there were less abrupt differences of possession, and greater social equality between the lower and middle classes than society actually presents (see Socramsm); but this by no means follow, necessarily from.tbe notion of democratic equality. All that this notion
requires, seems to be the removal of all privileges that destroy the unity and homo geneity of a nation, the establishment of complete personal and social liberty, and of the equality of all in the eye of the laws; and, in regard to political rights, or direct participation in the government of the state, such a form of constitution as will exclude no fixed class of citizens as such. All this, however, seems quite compatible with mak ing the exercise of the different political functions dependent, in the case of each indi vidual, on certain guarantees, and not admitting the whole body of the people to share in the government of the commonwealth at once, but only in proportion as increasing culture renders a wider circle capable of such functions. If 'we may judge from the example of England and Belgium, this is the way in which the real and steady progress of the democratic principle is best secured.
In France, the feudal principle, instead of a timely compromise with the democratic, as in England, came to a struggle with it of life and death. The consequence was that victorious democracy, instead of seeking to satisfy the practical wants of society first, and leaving the theoretical to be attained gradually, undertook to reorganize at one stroke the whole political and social fabric. In Germany, things took lately a similar course. The case of America is peculiar. There the foundation of the state structure was to be laid on a clear site, and the first page of the history to be written. Those who came together to form the new community were personally perfectly free and equal, and the local circumstances were such as to favor the exercise of this liberty and equal ity, by rendering any very great disparity in material means impossible. In such cir cumstances, the construction of a perfectly democratic order of society could be carried out without struggle, and without any dangerous straining of the principle. There no one looks upon the restriction of the franchise to. residents--which is the law in most states of the union—as an infringement of the democratic principle. Norway bears no little resemblance to America; in that country, the democratic element was never so completely crushed as in other parts of the continent, and that form of society is favored by the means and style of living, which are extremely simple, and arc based on a nearly equal division of the soil.