What Is Democracy Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from The Irresistible Movement of Democracy The object of this book is to tell the story of democracy from its first beginnings in the modern world until its culmination in our time. The idea was first suggested to me by trying to under stand what was meant by the famous phrase used during the world war, - to make the world safe for democracy. It sug gested the questions, What was democracy? What were the advantages of a form of government for which the world was striving? If democracy was attained, would it be a gain for humanity? Democracy has always been difficult of definition and much misunderstanding of its true nature has arisen because men have used the term in different senses. Democracy may mean either a spirit of society, a state of society, or a form of government. I have taken democracy in the usual meaning as accepted by Bryce, Lecky and Maine, as a form of popular government. In this general sense it has been used by modern writers, and its modern advent dates from the time when nations and men began to seek a form of government based upon the popular will as expressed in universal suffrage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.