ABSTRACT

The newly-constructed democratic institutions of France proceeded along almost the opposite path, towards a concentration of power in the hands of the people as a whole. After the golden age of Athens, democracy seemed a spent force, a generally discredited form of government, unstable, unprincipled, specially subject to violence, corruption and revolution. Democracy have been nurtured in ancient Greece, but in the modern world there was no influential class of persons who zealously campaigned. Ancient constitutions, like those of Lycurgus for Sparta and Solon for Athens, as well of course as of Moses for the Jews, were conceived as predominantly Promethean gifts of divine inspiration brought by great legislators to man. In ancient republics, the people had no representatives, Rousseau contends the tribunes of Rome, for instance, never seeking to usurp the plebiscitary authority which properly belonged to the whole people.