When the victory on either
side was so complete as to put an end to the strife, and no other
conflict took its place, first stagnation followed, and then decay.
The ascendancy of the numerical majority is less unjust, and on the
whole less mischievous, than many others, but it is attended with
the very same kind of dangers, and even more certainly; for when the
government is in the hands of One or a Few, the Many are always
existent as a rival power, which may not be strong enough ever to
control the other, but whose opinion and sentiment are a moral, and
even a social, support to all who, either from conviction or
contrariety of interest, are opposed to any of the tendencies of the
ruling authority. But when the Democracy is supreme, there is no One
or Few strong enough for dissentient opinions and injured or menaced
interests to lean upon. The great difficulty of democratic
government has hitherto seemed to be, how to provide, in a
democratic society, what circumstances have provided hitherto in all
the societies which have maintained themselves ahead of others- a
social support, a point d'appui, for individual resistance to the
tendencies of the ruling power; a protection, a rallying point, for
opinions and interests which the ascendant public opinion views with
disfavour. For want of such a point d'appui, the older societies,
and all but a few modern ones, either fell into dissolution or
became stationary (which means slow deterioration) through the
exclusive predominance of a part only of the conditions of social
and mental well-being.
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