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Updated: June 25, 2025
The idea of arbitration between nations, the solution of difficulties by arguments rather than by swords, the power which democracies hold in their hands for guiding the future destinies of the world all these in their various forms remain with us as legacies of that splendid, though ineffective, idealism which lay at the root of the Holy Alliance.
The propensity which democracies have to obey the impulse of passion rather than the suggestions of prudence, and to abandon a mature design for the gratification of a momentary caprice, was very clearly seen in America on the breaking out of the French revolution.
More definitely than any other nation we have thrown down to the world the challenge of democracy. We have said, "Away with kings, we will have no more of them! Away with castes and ruling classes, we will have no more of them!" As a matter of fact, democracies have no rulers the word survives from an older order of society they have guides, leaders and representatives.
But we are told that crimes of great enormity were perpetrated by the Athenian government, and the democracies under its protection. It is true that Athens too often acted up to the full extent of the laws of war in an age when those laws had not been mitigated by causes which have operated in later times.
We will continue to work closely with the industrialized democracies of Europe and Japan and with the International Monetary Fund to ensure it has adequate resources to help bring the world economy back to strong, noninflationary growth. As the leader of the West and as a country that has become great and rich because of economic freedom, America must be an unrelenting advocate of free trade.
It would be difficult to find one who could be the subject of a genuine lyric. Whitman, himself the most democratic poet of the modern world, felt this deficiency in the literature of the later democracies, and lamented the absence of great heroic figures. The poets have dropped out of the divine procession, and sing a solitary song.
And I confess I cannot connect this feature with the genuine democratic spirit of the mass. I can only suggest, in concluding this chapter, two possible causes rather peculiar to America, which may have made this great democracy so unlike all other democracies, and in this so manifestly hostile to the whole democratic idea.
As a matter of fact, government has come to occupy altogether too large a place in our consciousness; naturally, for it has come to a point where it pursues us and overtakes us at every turn. Democracies always govern too much, that is one of their great weaknesses. Elections, law-making, and getting and holding office, have become an obsession and they shadow our days.
No statue of either of them stands at Albany, the place of all others where such memorials should be erected, not merely as an honor to the two statesmen concerned, but as a lesson to the citizens of the State; pointing out the qualities which ought to ensure public gratitude, but which, thus far, democracies have least admired.
Moreover, they are paid for this and receive honour the greatest honour, as might be expected, from tyrants, and the next greatest from democracies; but the higher they ascend our constitution hill, the more their reputation fails, and seems unable from shortness of breath to proceed further. True.
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