"The manifest, the avowed difficulty is that democracy, no less than monarchy or aristocracy, sacrifices everything to maintain itself, and strives, with an energy and a plausibility that kings and nobles cannot attain, to override representation, to annul all the forces of resistance and deviation, and to secure, by Plebiscite, Referendum, or Caucus, free play for the will of the majority. The true democratic principle, that none shall have power over the people, is taken to mean that none shall be able to restrain or to elude its power. The true democratic principle, that the people shall not be made to do what it does not like, is taken to mean that it shall never be required to tolerate what it does not like. The true democratic principle, that every man‘s free will shall be as unfettered as possible, is taken to mean that the free will of the collective people shall be fettered in nothing. Religious toleration, judicial independence, dread of centralisation, jealousy of State interference, become obstacles to freedom instead of safeguards, when the centralised force of the State is wielded by the hands of the people. Democracy claims to be not only supreme, without authority above, but absolute, without independence below; to be its own master, not a trustee. The old sovereigns of the world are exchanged for a new one, who may be flattered and deceived, but whom it is impossible to corrupt or to resist, and to whom must be rendered the things that are Caesar's and also the things that are God’s. The enemy to be overcome is no longer the absolutism of the State, but the liberty of the subject."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Lord Acton, in his review of "Sir Erskine May's Democracy in Europe" in The Quarterly Review (January 1878), p. 73
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Democracy
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Democracy
306 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Democracy →
Related Quotes
"Kansanvalta on puhunut, pulinat pois! (Minister Johannes Virolainen, Suomenmaa 1980)"
"I cannot be brought to believe that this country will suffer if the Court refuses further to aggrandize the president…"
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists."
"The only way to practice democracy, is to practice democracy."
"... our democracy is merely nominal. We have a kakistocracy of plutocrat and proletariat for agents and beneficiaries…"
"Democracy is a system where people are counted but not weighed."
"The basic ideals and concepts of rationalist metaphysics were rooted in the concept of the universally human, of mank…"
"Although the quest for or preservation of “democracy” is often used as a justification for war, history has incessant…"
"Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of idea…"
"By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint o…"