Democracy; France -- Politics and government; Mental efficiency
This should be done in one way or another, either by a Chamber of its
own which should be endowed with great authority, or by the presence in
a single chamber of a considerable number of representatives of the
people, or by plebiscites constitutionally instituted as necessary for
the revision of the constitution and for laws of universal interest, or
by the liberty of the press and the liberty of association and public
meeting. This would not perhaps be enough, but it would be almost
enough. It is necessary that the people should be able to make known its
wants, and to influence the decisions of the Government, in a word its
voice should be heard and considered.
An aristocratic element is also necessary in a nation and in the
government of a nation so that all that admits of precision shall not be
smothered by that which is confused; so that what is exact shall not be
obscured by what is vague, and so that its firm resolves shall not be
shaken by vacillating and incoherent caprice.
Sometimes history itself makes an aristocracy--a fortunate circumstance
for a nation! This forms a caste more or less exclusive, it has
traditions, traditions more conservative of the laws than the laws
themselves, and it embodies in itself all that there is of life, and
energy and growth in the soul of a people. Sometimes history has failed
to give us an aristocracy or that which history has made has
disappeared. It is then that the people ought to draw one out of itself,
it is then its duty to appropriate and preserve the high qualities to be
found in men who have rendered service to the State or whose ancestors
have rendered service to the State, who have special qualifications for
each particular office and a moral efficiency for every form of public
service.
These qualities constitute the acquired aptitude of an aristocracy for
taking a part in the government; these qualities constitute its
adaptation to its social environment, and to its special function in our
social machinery and organisation. One might say that it is by these
qualities that _it enters into and becomes part of the organism of which
it is the material_. As John Stuart Mill has justly remarked, there
cannot be an expert, well-managed democracy if democracy will not allow
the expert to do the work which he alone can do.
What is wanted then and will always be wanted, even under socialism
where, as I pointed out, there will still be an aristocracy though a
more numerous one, is a blending of democracy and aristocracy; and here,
though he wrote a long time ago, we shall find Aristotle is always right
for he studied in a scientific spirit some hundred and fifty different
constitutions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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