William Lecky, an English historian, wrote a book called Democracy and Liberty just before the turn of the twentieth century. In it, he describes the malevolent effects against personal liberty of a full-blown democracy. Although Lecky was criticized for his stand, today, he looks like a prophet. America is displaying all the signs of decay and decline predicted in Lecky’s great work. He shared his thoughts on the close alignment of democracy and despotism:
The American Constitution, indeed, was framed by men who had for the most part the strongest sense of the dangers of democracy. The school of American thought which was represented in a great degree by Washington and John Adams, and still more emphatically by Gouvemeur Morris and Alexander Hamilton ; which inspired the Federalist and was embodied in the Federalist party, was utterly opposed to the schools of Rousseau, of Paine, and even of Jefferson, and it has largely guided American policy to the present hour. It did not prevent America from becoming a democracy, but it framed a form of government under which the power of the democracy was broken and divided, restricted to a much smaller sphere, and attended with far less disastrous results than in most European countries. Hamilton, who was probably the greatest political thinker America has produced, was, in the essentials of his political thought, quite as conservative as Burke, and he never concealed his preference for monarchical institutions. Democratic government, he believed, must end in despotism, and be in the meantime destructive to public morality and to the security of private property.
Lecky understood that liberty could only be ensured by dividing and restricting the power of the masses to vote themselves a free lunch. He wrote:
In the true spirit of Burke, the American statesmen clearly saw how useless it would be to reproduce all English institutions in a country where they had no historical or traditional basis. The United States did not contain the materials for founding a constitutional monarchy or a powerful aristocracy, and a great part of the traditional habits and observances that restrained and regulated English parliamentary government could not possibly operate in a new country with the same force. It was necessary to adopt other means, but the ends that were aimed at were much the same. To divide and restrict power ; to secure property ; to check the appetite for organic change; to guard individual liberty against the tyranny of the multitude, as well as against the tyranny of an individual or a class ; to infuse into American political life a spirit of continuity and of sober and moderate freedom, were the ends which the great American statesmen set before them, and which they in a large measure attained. They gave an elected president during his short period of office an amount of power which was, on the whole, not less than that of George III. They invested their Senate with powers considerably beyond those of the House of Lords. They restricted by a clearly defined and written Constitution the powers of the representative body, placing, among other things, the security of property, the sanctity of contract, and the chief forms of personal and religious liberty beyond the powers of a mere parliamentary majority to infringe. They established a Supreme Court with the right of interpreting authoritatively the Constitution and declaring Acts of Congress which exceeded.
The founders of America understood that unless property was protected by law, it would quickly fall prey to a majority vote. On the other hand, unless the majority were protected against the wealthy predatorial plunderers, a plutocracy would form, milking the many to fatten the few. Lecky elaborates on the Constitutional protections against unjust income taxes, sadly no longer true today:
These things, however, would not be acquiesced in if it were not that an admirable written Constitution, enforced by a powerful and vigilant Supreme Court, had restricted to small limits the possibilities of misgovernment. All the rights that men value the most are placed beyond the reach of a tyrannical majority. Congress is debarred by the Constitution from making any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech and of the press, or the right of assembly, or the right of petition. No person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. All the main articles of what British statesmen would regard as necessary liberties are guaranteed, and property is so fenced round by constitutional provisions that confiscatory legislation becomes almost impossible. No private property can be taken for public use without just compensation, and the Federal Constitution contains an invaluable provision forbidding any State to pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts. The danger of partial or highly graduated taxation voted by the many and falling on the few has been, in a great measure, guarded against by the clauses in the Constitution providing that representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the States according to their population ; that no capitation or other direct tax shall belaid unless in proportion to the census, and that all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. The judgment of the Supreme Court condemning the income-tax in 1894 brought into clear relief the full force and meaning of these provisions. Neither Congress nor the State legislatures can pass any Hill of attainder or any ex post facto law punishing acts which were not punishable when they were committed.
What happened to our once great land? In my opinion, the root causes boil down to a lack of moral character. Both the rich, middle, and poor seem more interested in getting the most benefits from the government with the least amount of effort, instead of fixing the systematic causes of destruction inherent in America’s full-fledged despotic democracy. Unless the American citizens resolve to change on the inside, nothing will change on the outside. This is why I wrote RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions For LIFE, because without character-based internal change, there is little that can be done to arrest the decline of our once great republic into a dismal democracy. America can be transformed, but only when its citizens transform themselves by the renewing of their minds. Lecky shared on the true end of all governments:
The Constitution of Alabama expresses admirably the best spirit of American statesmanship when it states that ‘ the sole and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, and when the Government assumes other functions, it is usurpation and oppression.’
Let’s do our part on bringing American government back to its true purpose and salvage the American Dream for the next generation.