We have next to consider
how far it is possible so to organise the democracy as, without
interfering materially with the characteristic benefits of
democratic government, to do away with these two great evils, or at
least to abate them, in the utmost degree attainable by human
contrivance.
The common mode of attempting this is by limiting the democratic
character of the representation, through a more or less restricted
suffrage. But there is a previous consideration which, duly kept in
view, considerably modifies the circumstances which are supposed to
render such a restriction necessary. A completely equal democracy,
in a nation in which a single class composes the numerical majority,
cannot be divested of certain evils; but those evils are greatly
aggravated by the fact that the democracies which at present exist are
not equal, but systematically unequal in favour of the predominant
class. Two very different ideas are usually confounded under the
name democracy. The pure idea of democracy, according to its
definition, is the government of the whole people by the whole people,
equally represented. Democracy as commonly conceived and hitherto
practised is the government of the whole people by a mere majority
of the people, exclusively represented. The former is synonymous
with the equality of all citizens; the latter, strangely confounded
with it, is a government of privilege, in favour of the numerical
majority, who alone possess practically any voice in the State.
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