wielded by a financial or political oligarchy, or like the Athenian Republic, in which it is restricted to a small minority of the male inhabitants of the State.
Attention has been called to the fact that democracy as a social principle is of modern origin. This explains the curious differences be tween the ancient and the modern conceptions of political democracy. The Aristotelian notion of democracy as a community of free citizens ruling the State, not being based on any conception of the essential equality of all men, was not offended by the existence in the State of a numerous labor ing class, servile or free, and of a large resident alien population, which together outnumbered the political citizens ten to one, and which were equally excluded from participation in the government. The modern idea of a political democracy, on the other hand, being derived from the social conception of the equal worth of all members of the State, is satisfied with nothing less than the substantial participation of the great body of the people in the affairs of the State. It rests upon the theory that the people, their hap piness being the true end of government, are better judges of what will conduce to their happiness than is any individual or group of individuals likely to arise by any hereditary or self selective process—a sound and salutary doctrine, which, however, in political experience runs too easily into the extreme form of the assertion that for public purposes one man's opinion is as good as that of any other man, and that all men are entitled to equal weight in political affairs.
It is to England more than to any other nation, even than the United States, that the modern world owes the realization of the democratic ideal in forms of political action. The two great revolutions—that which resulted in the creation of the Commonwealth, and that which finally expelled the Stuarts—were essentially popular in character. Though the Parliament was through out that period, and until the reforms of 1832 and 1867, an aristocratic body, its responsiveness to public opinion and its steadfast resistance to royal pretensions made it the type of a popular representative assembly in Europe. Before the middle of the nineteenth century every considerable European State, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, had adopted a constitution limiting the power of the Crown, and vesting a considerable share of political power in the people. and in most of them a representative legislature of the parliamentary or British type was adopted. But nowhere on the Continent, excepting in Switzerland and in Norway and Sweden, has popular government reached a high degree of efficiency or attained any considerable measure of Success. Even in England the complete triumph of the democratic principle has been delayed, both in polities and society, by the persistence of the aristocratic tradition, which still preserves a considerable number of legal rights and privileges to a social class based on birth and inherited wealth. and which gives that class a preponderating influence in the political organization of the State.
Democracy in the United States is historically
the off-spring of the democratic forces in English
political institutions. The radical wing of English republicanism and Whiggery in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries dominated the
settlement of the English colonies in America and
dictated their political development. The simplicity of colonial life and the absence of any
considerable representative of the English aristocratic classes promoted the orderly growth of a
homogeneous democracy, which stood clearly revealed when the shock of separation from the
mother country came. The speedy adoption of
a written constitution, however, fixed the forms
of American democracy, and in so far tends to
control the evolution of its ideals.
The result is that in most forms of political action
the United States is now less democratic than
Great Britain, In spirit the English democracy
is doubtless more conservative than that of the
United States, but it is doubtful how long it will
remain so, See Constitution; Government; {{NIE|Republic}.
Most of the philosophical authorities are hostile critics of democratic government. For the
ancient and mediTemplate:Susbt:aeval view, see Dunning, History of Political Theories—Ancient and Medical (New York, 1902); for the modern view, consult: De Tocqueville. Democracy in America (1835); Motley, Historic Progress of American Democracy (1869); Freeman, Comparative Politics (London,
1873); May. Democracy in Europe (1878);
Maine, Popular Government (London, 1885);
Bryce, The American Commonwealth (2d ed.,
London and New York); Lecky, Democracy and Liberty (London, 1896); Burgess, Political Science and Constitutional Law (Boston, 1891);
Woodrow Wilson, The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics (Boston. 1892).
DEMOC'RATES (Lat., from Gk. (
Greek characters),
Dēmokratēs). An Attic orator who lived about
350, a contemporary of Demosthenes and an
opponent of the Macedonian party. He accompanied Demosthenes to Philip to receive the latter's oath to the treaty with Athens, and afterwards assisted him in concluding a treaty against Philip with the Thebans. As an orator he was of only secondary importance. A fragment of one of his orations is preserved in Aristotle (Rhetoric, iii. 4, 3).
DEMOCRATIC PARTY. The term Democratic, as used in American party politics, was occasionally and loosely applied in the years 1789-92 to the group of Anti-Federalists (q.v.), and thereafter, in the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first two decades of the nineteenth, to the party then commonly known as the Republícan. The vigorous adoption by these Anti-Federalist Republicans, especially during Washington's Administration, of French principles and sympathies led to the application to them of the term Democratic Republican, which remained in quite common usage for more than thirty years. This general attitude was one of opposition to all centralizing tendencies in the interpretation of the Federal Constitution. They wished the National Government to remain weak, somewhat as it had been under the old Confederation; and they regarded the States as sovereign in an extreme sense of that word. (See {{NIE article link|Strict Constructionists.) Upon the disappearance of the Federalist Party (q.v.), there gradually appeared within the only party then active two groups, one of which became known as the National Republicans, and the other of which retained the old name of Democratic Republicans. The former developed into the Whig Party (q.v. ), while the latter was compactly organized
