of sound sense and tried experience rather than dogmatic precept,
all men will read his book with profit, and almost all without offence.

Although he does not insist on inculcating a moral, he has stated in his
introductory pages the ideas that guide him; and, indeed, the reader who
fails to recognise the lesson of the book in every chapter will read in
vain. Sir Erskine May is persuaded that it is the tendency of modern
progress to elevate the masses of the people, to increase their part in
the work and the fruit of civilisation, in comfort and education, in
self-respect and independence, in political knowledge and power. Taken
for a universal law of history, this would be as visionary as certain
generalisations of Montesquieu and Tocqueville; but with the necessary
restrictions of time and place, it cannot fairly be disputed. Another
conclusion, supported by a far wider induction, is that democracy, like
monarchy, is salutary within limits and fatal in excess; that it is the
truest friend of freedom or its most unrelenting foe, according as it is
mixed or pure; and this ancient and elementary truth of constitutional
government is enforced with every variety of impressive and suggestive
illustration from the time of the Patriarchs down to the revolution
which, in 1874, converted federal Switzerland into an unqualified
democracy governed by the direct voice of the entire people.

The effective distinction between liberty and democracy, which has
occupied much of the author's thoughts, cannot be too strongly drawn.
Slavery has been so often associated with democracy, that a very able
writer pronounced it long ago essential to a democratic state; and the
philosophers of the Southern Confederation have urged the theory with
extreme fervour. For slavery operates like a restricted franchise,
attaches power to property, and hinders Socialism, the infirmity that
attends mature democracies. The most intelligent of Greek tyrants,
Periander, discouraged the employment of slaves; and Pericles designates
the freedom from manual labour as the distinguishing prerogative of
Athens. At Rome a tax on manumissions immediately followed the
establishment of political equality by Licinius. An impeachment of
England for having imposed slavery on America was carefully expunged
from the Declaration of Independence; and the French Assembly, having
proclaimed the Rights of Man, declared that they did not extend to the
colonies. The abolition c