There remains still the finest and fairest of all men and all
States—tyranny and the tyrant. Tyranny springs from democracy much as
democracy springs from oligarchy. Both arise from excess; the one from
excess of wealth, the other from excess of freedom. ‘The great natural
good of life,’ says the democrat, ‘is freedom.’ And this exclusive love
of freedom and regardlessness of everything else, is the cause of the
change from democracy to tyranny. The State demands the strong wine of
freedom, and unless her rulers give her a plentiful draught, punishes
and insults them; equality and fraternity of governors and governed is
the approved principle. Anarchy is the law, not of the State only, but
of private houses, and extends even to the animals. Father and son,
citizen and foreigner, teacher and pupil, old and young, are all on a
level; fathers and teachers fear their sons and pupils, and the wisdom
of the young man is a match for the elder, and the old imitate the
jaunty manners of the young because they are afraid of being thought
morose. Slaves are on a level with their masters and mistresses, and
there is no difference between men and women. Nay, the very animals in
a democratic State have a freedom which is unknown in other places. The
she-dogs are as good as their she-mistresses, and horses and asses
march along with dignity and run their noses against anybody who comes
in their way. ‘That has often been my experience.’ At last the citizens
become so sensitive that they cannot endure the yoke of laws, written
or unwritten; they would have no man call himself their master. Such is
the glorious beginning of things out of which tyranny springs.
‘Glorious, indeed; but what is to follow?’ The ruin of oligarchy is the
ruin of democracy; for there is a law of contraries; the excess of
freedom passes into the excess of slavery, and the greater the freedom
the greater the slavery. You will remember that in the oligarchy were
found two classes—rogues and paupers, whom we compared to drones with
and without stings. These two classes are to the State what phlegm and
bile are to the human body; and the State-physician, or legislator,
must get rid of them, just as the bee-master keeps the drones out of
the hive. Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are more
numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are inert
and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the
keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and
prevent their opponents from being heard. And there is another class in
democratic States, of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be
squeezed when the drones have need of their possessions; there is
moreover a third class, who are the labourers and the artisans, and
they make up the mass of the people. When the people meet, they are
omnipotent, but they cannot be brought together unless they are
attracted by a little honey; and the rich are made to supply the honey,