Parliament and Revolution (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Parliament and Revolution<br><br>Even before the war came to displace in the minds of people thoughts of ordered progress by change of opinion and put in their stead those of violent conquest of power, impatience was being shown with Parliament and representative Government as the means of expressing the popular will; even the popular will itself was being analysed out of existence. James Mill's article on Government which appeared in 1820 in the Supplement to the Encyclopdia Britannica, expressed the faith of the Parliamentary Radicals. This was very simple. Give the people the vote, the argument ran, and Parliament will respond to popular desires. "If the community itself were the choosing body, the interest of the community and that of the choosing body would be the same." All the selfishness of the ruling classes will disappear because the ruling classes will themselves disappear. This was the argument for Democracy.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.