John Dalberg Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834-1902) was one of the towering figures of Victorian scholarship, and a close adviser to Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, of the Liberal Party. John Buchan noted that Acton had uncovered as many as two hundred definitions of the word ‘liberty’; the fact that Acton sympathised with the South in the American Civil War shows how tricky these definitions can be. Some champions of free trade and non-intervention quite took the opposite view: see Dixie on Thames.
Part 1 of 2
TAKE any of our contemporary phrases — ‘self-determination,’ ‘liberty,’ ‘the right to work,’ ‘international solidarity,’ and so forth. They all have a kind of dim meaning, but as they are currently used they have many very different meanings, and these meanings are often contradictory. I think it was Lord Acton who once said he had counted two hundred definitions of ‘liberty.’
Perhaps the worst sinner in this respect is the word ‘democracy.’ As commonly used, it has a dozen quite distinct meanings, when it has any meaning at all, and we are all familiar in political discussions with the circular argument — that such and such a measure is good for the people because it is democratic; and if it be asked why it is democratic, the answer is, ‘Because it is good for the people.’
‘Democratic’ really describes that form of government in which the policy of the State is determined and its business conducted by the will of the majority of its citizens, expressed through some regular channel. It is a word which denotes machinery, not purpose.
Part Two
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), President of the USA and inspiration of the Union in the Civil War. Buchan quoted Lincoln’s plea for a good definition of liberty, which should be read in the context of the struggle between Union and Confederacy. “In using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. We assume the word ‘liberty’ to mean that each worker can do as he pleases with himself and the product of his labour, while, on the other hand, it may mean that some man can do as he pleases with other men and the produce of other men’s labour.”
‘POPULAR,’ often used as an equivalent, means merely that the bulk of the people approve of a particular mode of government.* ‘Liberal,’ the other assumed equivalent, implies those notions of freedom, toleration and pacific progress which lie at the roots of Western civilisation.
The words are clearly not interchangeable. A policy or a government may be popular without being liberal or democratic; there have been highly popular tyrannies; the German policy of 1914 was popular, but it was not liberal, nor was Germany a democracy.* America is a democracy, but it is not always liberal; the French Republic has at various times in its history been both liberal and democratic without being popular. Accurately employed, ‘democratic’ describes a particular method, ‘popular’ an historical fact, ‘liberal’ a quality and an ideal.
The study of history will make us chary about the loud, vague use of formulas. It will make us anxious to see catchwords in their historical relations, and will help us to realise the maleficent effect of phrases which have a fine rhetorical appeal, but very little concrete meaning.
Buchan is simplifying a little. ‘A popular government’ is a government that is approved by a large majority; but ‘popular government’ is a technical term roughly equivalent to democracy, i.e. government responsible to the people rather than a monarch or an elite. That said, Buchan’s point is well-taken: the fact that a government or policy is popular in the sense of ‘widely liked’ does not make it either democratic or liberal (or wise).
This volume of ‘Nations of Today’ was published in 1923. Much the same happened again ten years afterwards, when on March 23rd, 1933, the German Parliament voted to let Chancellor Adolf Hitler introduce any law he wished without consulting them, for four years. Clearly, having an elected Parliament does not make for a democracy — at least not in the British sense of that word.
