ble that a democracy is no better than any other form
of government, and is as bad as aristocracy or pure monarchy, under both
of which modes of governing states there have been civil wars, heavy
expenditures, much suffering for all classes of men, and great
insecurity for life and property. Assuredly, democracy never could hope
for a fairer field than has here existed; and if here it has failed, the
friends of democracy must suffer everywhere, and the cause of democracy
receive a check from which it cannot hope to recover for generations. As
"the horrors of the French Revolution" have proved most prejudicial to
the popular cause for seventy years, so must the failure of the American
"experiment" prove prejudicial to that cause throughout Christendom. Our
failure must be even more prejudicial than that of France; for the
French movement was undertaken under circumstances that rendered failure
all but certain, whereas ours was entered upon amid the most favoring
conditions, such as seemed to make failure wellnigh impossible. But we
do not admit that the position assumed by our European enemies is a
sound one, and therefore we hold that the conclusion to which they have
come, and from which they hope to effect so much for the cause of
oppression, is entirely erroneous. Whether we have failed or not, the
democratic principle remains unaffected. As we never have believed that
our example was fairly quotable by European democrats, even when we
appeared to be, and in most respects were, the most successful of
constitutionally governed nations, so do we now deny that our failure to
preserve peace in the old Union can be adduced in evidence against the
excellence of democracy, as that is understood by the advanced liberals
of Europe. As there is nothing in the history of the French Revolution
that should make reflecting men averse to constitutional liberty, so is
there nothing in the history of our war that should cause such men to
become hostile to that democratic idea which, as great observers assure
us, is to overcome and govern the world.

If we have failed, _if_ our conflict is destined to end in a "general
break-down," so unhappy a close to a grand movement will not be due to
the ascendency of democracy here, but rather to democracy having by us
been kept down and depressed. Our polity is not a democratic polity. It
was never meant that it should be a democratic polity. Judging from the
history of the doings of the nationa