Democracy, in politics, was based on the idea that public affairs could best be run by the public voice. However expert may be the hand that administers the laws, the hand and the heart that renders the final decision in large questions must belong to the public.[1]
The people who laid the foundations for democracy in France and the United States feared tyranny. They and their ancestors had been, for centuries, the victims of governmental despotism. They were on their guard constantly against governmental aggression in any form. And they, therefore, placed the strictest limitations upon the powers that governments should enjoy.
Special privilege government was run by a special class,—the hereditary aristocracy—in the interest and for the profit of that class. They held the wealth of the nation—the land—and lived comfortably upon its produce. They never worked—no gentleman could work and remain a gentleman. They carried on the affairs of the court—sometimes well, sometimes badly; maintained an extravagant scale of social life; built up a vicious system of secret international diplomacy; commanded in time of war, and at all times; levied rents and taxes which went very largely to increase their own comfort and better their own position in life. The machinery of government and the profits from government remained in the hands of this one class.
Class government from its very nature could not be other than oppressive. "All hereditary government over a people is to them a species of slavery and representative government is freedom." "All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny. … To inherit a government is toinherit the people as if they were flocks and herds."[2]
- ↑ Tom Paine held ardently to this doctrine, "It is always the interest of a far greater number of people in a Nation to have things right than to let them remain wrong; and when public matters are open to debate, and the public judgment free, it will not decide wrong unless it decides too hastily!" "Rights of Man," Part II, Ch. 4.
- ↑ "Rights of Man," Thomas Paine. Part II, Chapter 3.
