XXXll
INTRO D UCTION.
on Democracy, in his study of it in America did not perceive
this danger, which, in truth, did not then exist ; but anot er
French writer, M. Dupont-WTiite, who unites profoundness of
thought with a brilliant and original style, makes the danger
clearly appear by citing a letter of Macaulay’s, which reads h e
a prophecy.
In this letter, dated the 23rd of May, 1857, and addressed
to an American, Macaulay says, that though for the moment
the immense tracts of unoccupied land in America may serve
to stave off the evil day, yet the time would come when the
rapid increase of population would produce the same economic
conditions there as here, the same crises, stoppages of work,
lowering of wages, and strikes, and that then the democratic
institutions of America would be put to the test. What will
the issue be ? “ It is quite plain,” he says, “ that your Government
will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented
majority, for with you the majority is the Government, and has
the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy.
And then he adds :—
“The day will come when, in the State of New York a multitude of
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preferred by the working man who hears his children crying for more
bread? I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of
adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperUy from
returning. Either some Cæsar or Napoleon will seize the reins of Government
with a strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plundered
and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman
Empire was in the fifth ; with this difference-that the Huns and Vandals
who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns
and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country and by
vniir own institutions.
Macaulay wrote this twenty-seven years ago. We must not
forget that the Greek democracies passed through similar trials
and perished.
