ABSTRACT
THE rise of Tyranny in any community is ultimately due to the victory of the sense of the value of leadership over the sense of the value of individual right. It is easy to form this conclusion from results, but it does not help us to answer certain questions. By what historical process is the surrender of right carried out and why have some communities shown themselves much more ready than others to make such surrenders? A general answer may, perhaps, be found by observing the course of political evolution. In primitive communities the binding force of custom is too strong to permit any considerable delegation of power. When, as in England, custom develops into a common law, administered and amended, at least in part, not only by the consent but with the active co-operation of the people, the sense of individual right is strengthened through constant exercise, and interference with the constitutional organism becomes extremely difficult. Such incorporation of custom and popular control into the constitution is extremely rare. It occurred in England because transition from the static phase of clan organisation was not followed by precocity of political development; as foreign dangers were not acute and as economic life was simple and lethargic, constitutional evolution was slow and comprehensive. Normally, however, custom gives way to necessity and the special needs of the community compel some surrender of rights in order to secure peace, prosperity and independence. In any society that is at all complicated delegation of function is essential and the smaller and more compact the community the greater will be the sense of security with which transfer of power will be made. In the city state the process was accelerated by the strength of the democratic consciousness; the citizens were themselves the source of authority and for their own convenience they could transfer that authority to officers of their choice. Partly because the unit of government was small, they failed to see the necessity for retention of control by means of the regular application of constitutional restraints. Competition, greed for wealth and lands, fear of foreign or domestic enemies turned their attention from means to ends and led them to prefer efficiency to direct exercise of rights. In this way authority was delegated first to oligarchs and then to tyrants without any intention of permanent surrender of control. Development along these lines was fairly rapid in the small and highly complicated communities of ancient Greece and medieval Italy; in the great territorial kingdoms the process was longer, though normally the same end was reached. Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Frederick the Great and Napoleon were alike in basing their power on the accomplishment of great things, which satisfied the ambition and pride of their subjects. The idea of nationality is, in fact, only a halting and less articulate form of the idea of democratic sovereignty underlying civic particularism. The national despotisms of modern Europe slowly came into being for the same reasons of state that called into existence the tyrannies of Greece and Italy. Thus we have the paradox that the stronger the sense of democratic unity in a free community the greater is the danger of surrender of individual political rights. “Democracy is destroyed by its insatiable craving for the object which it defines to be supremely good.” 1
