It may happen that other persons be sides those enumerated may be excluded from participation in the sovereign power in a government which is called a demo cracy. The suffrage may be given only to those who have a certain amount of property, which resembles one of the cases mentioned by Aristotle. If the amount of property required should ex clude a great number of the people, the government might still be called demo cratical rather than by any other name, if the persons excluded were a small minority compared with the majority. If they were nearly equal in numbers to the majority, they would find out some name for the majority which would express their opinion of the form of government : and the word that they would now use would be aristocratical, a word which would imply dislike and censure. If the portion of the people who were thus excluded from the suffrage should be a majority, the ruling body would be properly called an aristocracy.
A democracy has been here defined as it has existed in some countries and as it exists in others. No attempt is made to ascertain its origin, any more than the origin of society. It is here viewed as a form of government that may and does exist. The foundation of the notion of a democracy is that the sovereign power is equally distributed, not among all the people in a state, but among all the free men who have attained a certain age, which is defined. Democracy therefore, if we derive the notion of it from all de mocracies that have existed, instead of from certain wild theories of natural rights, is based upon the principle that it is for the general interest that some persons should be excluded from the pos session of that political power which others enjoy. A democracy also like a monar chy can only give effect to its will through the medium of forms and agents. Prac tically there cannot always be a reference to the will of the majority on every occa sion, no more than there can be in a mo narchy. A monarch must govern by the aid of others, and the sovereign demo cracy must carry its purposes into effect by the aid of members of its body, to whom power sufficient for the purpose is given. The agent of a democracy is a representative body for the purpose of le gislating. For the usual purposes of ad ministration a democracy must have agents, officers, and functionaries. as well as a monarchy. The mode in which they are chosen and the tenure of office may be different, but while they act, they must have power delegated of a like kind to that which a monarch delegates. A
form of government may be such that there shall be an hereditary head, a class with peculiar privileges, and also a repre sentative body. The existence of a re presentative body chosen by a large class of the people has led to the appellation of the term democratical to that portion of such governments which is composed of a representative body and to those who elect such body. But the use of the terms democracy and democratical as applied to such bodies tends to cause confusion. It is true that such mixed governments pre sent the spectacle of a struggle between the different members of the sovereign power, and as it is often assumed that the popular part aims at destroying the other parts, and as many speculators wish that it should ultimately destroy them, such speculators speak of such so-called demo cracy as a thing existing by itself, as if it were a distinct power in the state ; whereas, according to the strict notion of sovereignty, there is no democracy except when there is no other power which par ticipates in the sovereignty than indi viduals possessed of equal political power.
When the popular member of a sovereign body has destroyed all the other members, the popular member becomes the sovereign body, and it is a democracy, if it then corresponds to the description that has been given of a democracy.
A curious article by M. Gnizot, entitled Of Democracy in Modern Society,' has been translated and published in England. It is written with reference to the condi tion of France and in opposition to the assertion made by some French writers "that modern society, our France, is demo cmtical, entirely democratical ; and that her institutions, her laws, her government, her administration, her politics, must all rest on this basis, be adapted to this condition." M. Guizot successfully com bats certain hypotheses and assumptions, most of which however have either been exploded by all sound political writers or would be rejected by any man of reflec tion. His essay contains, as we might expect from his attainments and long ex perience in the world, many just remarks, but it is disfigured and often rendered almost unmeaning by the lax use of poli tical terms and a tone of mysticism and obscurity which are better adapted to confuse than to convince.