TRUE DEMOCRACY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 111, 7 April 1930, Page 7

TRUE DEMOCRACY.

SOME DISTINCTIONS. “Democracy, for its fullest flower, requires distinction of manner, of speech and of dress more than does any other form of society,” said Dr. Nicholas Butler, president of Colombia University, in his annual address. “In that popular form of impossibility which is described as the levelling process, there is an alternative mode of procedure—men may attempt to level themselves up or they may attempt to level themselves down. If they choose to attempt to level themselves down democracy will sooner or later disappear into ochlocracy, and this is always the forerunner of a new despotism. The more serious and seductive of the two powerful attacks which are just now being made upon the foundations of democracy finds its strength iii the conviction that demoracy as it has presented itself in the Western world cannot escape ochlocracy, which is merely mob rule. The cruel subterfuge of false democracy has misled millions upon millions, and has closed their eyes to the fact that a democratic system which cannot produce an aristocracy of its own for its ornament and its service is certainly doomed. Democracy’s aristocracy is not ono of birth, of inherited privilege, or of wealth, but it is one of character, of. high intelligence, of large knowledge, of zeal for service, recruited from the bosom of democracy itself. • Under the operation of the law of liberty, true democracy will open the way to the upbuilding of an aristocr-acy that is all its own as well as its cliiefest ornament.” HUMAN EQUALITY. “The cure for false democracy is true democracy. It is not, and cannot be, tho return to despotism under any form, however attractive that may appear to be,” said Dr. Butler. “In true democracy the path' must lie open from tho bottom to tfcp top, and the absurd notion that all men can be made alike and all put on one and the same level of competence, authority and possession, be abandoned as the hopeless folly which it is. Human equality means equality of consideration, equality of treatment, equality of opportunity; it has never meant, and by no thoughtful man lias it ever been supposed to mean, sameness of any kind. Indeed, to treat all human individuals the same is to treat them unequally. Equality of treatment means not the same treatment for all, but a like manner of treatment for all. The parable of the labourers in the vineyard throws light oh this distinction. . .. . It is when one leaves false democracy behind and catches the vision of true, democracy that the importance of manners becomes clear.: Manners, to be really such, must not be pretence or only superficial. They must be built upon and become the outgrowth of fixed habits of thought and action, which are themselves grounded in character. Care of one’s person and dress, care of one’s speech and bearing,, care of one’s deference and respect to age or to real distinction, and that concern for the preferences, the comfort and satisfactions of other people which Lord Chatham described as benevolence in trifles —these are the important things.