CHAPTER VIII

DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESS

By a democracy we understand a government in which the supreme power is directly exercised or controlled by the people collectively. A democracy in name is not necessarily one in fact. A government called by some other name may be a democracy in reality. What Tennyson says in regard to the people as a class is of interest to us as indicating his views of the policy of putting supreme governmental power in their hands. There are some lines that would give us reason to infer that the poet had not great confidence in the wisdom, the ability, or the character of the masses. St. Simeon Stylites calls the people who take him for a saint "silly " and " foolish.” 1 In "The Vision of Sin" these lines occur:

Welcome, fellow-citizens,

Hollow hearts and empty heads.❜

When Merlin the Wise compares the harlot to the crowd, he gives his judgment of the people as well as of the scarlet woman:

1" St. Simeon Stylites," pp. 87, 88.

2 P. 122.

And in this

Are harlots like the crowd, that if they find
Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
Not grieving that their greatest are so small,
Inflate themselves, with some insane delight,
And judge all Nature from her feet of clay,
Without the will to lift their eyes, and see

Her Godlike head crown'd with spiritual fire And touching other worlds. I am weary of her.3 Tiresias does not express any higher opinion of the wisdom of the people. He says:

When the crowd would roar

For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom,
To cast wise words among the multitude
Was flinging fruit to lions.

I would that I were gathered to my rest
And mingled with the famous kings of old,
On whom about their ocean-islets flash
The faces of the Gods - the wise man's word,
Here trampled by the populace underfoot,
There crown'd with worship.*

The same estimate, coupled with a strong statement of the untruthfulness of the multitude is given in "Vastness":

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless violence mourn'd by the wise,

Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular torrent of lies."

8" Merlin and Vivien,” p. 393.

4.66
"Tiresias," pp. 539, 540.

The common people have from the remotest times been bearers of burdens, victims of tyranny and oppression. This truth of history the poet has not failed to portray. This is the representation in "The Palace of Art":

The people here, a beast of burden slow,

Toil'd onward, prick'd with goads and stings.®

In "Locksley Hall" he used a figure he gained from reading Pringle's Travels, to indicate the slow advance of a suffering people:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher,

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowlydying fire.'

Godiva knew of the burdens of the people and "loathed to see them overtaxed."

But whatever may be the theory concerning the right of the people to exercise power in government, that power has actually been exercised in the past to a greater or less extent. To the poet the signs indicate an increase rather than a diminution of it in the future. The speaker in "Locksley Hall" sees "the standards of the people plunging thro' the thunder storm." This observation of the tendency of the time finds ex

"P. 46.
'P. IOI.

pression even in "In Memoriam." One asks the

mourner:

Is this an hour

For private sorrow's barren song,

When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?'

The devoted Edith asserts that Harold is not to be the last English king of England, but

First of a line coming from the people,
And chosen by the people."

Antonius speaks a good word for the common throng, when he says to the lustful Synorix:

I have heard them say in Rome,

That your own people cast you from their bounds, For some unprincely violence to a woman,

As Rome did Tarquin."

It is undoubtedly true, as has been stated by a careful student of English social and political life, that many of the “equality" ideas current in England came from France. It may not be exactly agreeable to an Englishman to admit the correctness of this statement, but any unprejudiced observer familiar with the social history of both countries will find no good reason seriously to question it. The hopes that the

'XXI, p. 253.

10 66 Harold," Act V, sc. 1, p. 687.

French patriots, with their motto of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," aroused in the minds of men were crushed to earth by the horrors of the Revolution. But the principles at the foundation of that great struggle were thus brought to the attention of the world, and have never since been forgotten. They became effective in two ways: first, by securing the enthusiastic support of those who came to believe in them when definitely stated; and, second, by arousing the determined opposition of the conservatives who believed that such principles are pernicious and tend to the overthrow of established government. The French struggle for liberty clarified the ideas of the world by setting out in bold relief the principles for which the struggle stood, and calling for a division of the house.

"Equality" is a word which has been greatly misunderstood. If it meant that every man has the same intellectual and moral power as every other man, and should have the same political and financial possessions, it is an absurdity that needs only to be stated to be recognized. Yet this is what many foreigners supposed the equality" cry of France to signify. If understood to mean equality of opportunity, it would win more adherents and arouse less violent opposition. Tennyson does not dwell upon this

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