Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Sir James Fitzjames Stephen

Sir James Fitzjames StephenA dozen decades ago today, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen passed on.

Wrote Chilton Williamson, Jr.:

Even so, [Stephen] -- believing as he did, with Tocqueville, that mass democracy was the inevitable future, whether it worked or not -- maintains that he has nothing to recommend as a substitute for universal suffrage. The old ways, many of them as bad in their own time as new ones are in ours, were being swept away "like haycoocks in a flood." "The waters are out and no human force can turn them back." Only, "I do not see see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god."

No comments: