Through the woodland's purple plumage to the diamond night.
Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pass.
And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and, wondering,
Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king.
This verse is obviously a poetical account of the experience he underwent "on some remote plain or steppe," and the final couplet of it gives the explanation of his belief in democracy. If he had no faith in the god in man, if he were not certain that "the restless ploughman ... deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king," he would probably offer his allegiance to autocracy and believe in government by a caste; but since he has seen visions and is convinced that there is a god in man, he cannot be other than a democrat. All his political strivings have been directed towards making this "a society where people will be at harmony in their economic life," as he writes in "The National Being," and "will readily listen to different opinions from their own, will not turn sour faces on those who do not think as they do, but will, by reason and sympathy, comprehend each other, and come at last, through sympathy and affection, to a balancing of their diversities, as in that multitudinous diversity which is the universe, powers and dominions and elements are balanced, and are guided harmoniously by the Shepherd of the Ages." Whether such a world, balanced in that way, can be rightly described as a democracy is not a matter on which I offer any opinion here, though it seems to me to be a very long way from what the common man considers a democracy to be.
V
It is when we come to connect his visions and the beliefs he derives from them with the actual circumstances in which we find ourselves that we begin to be most dubious. "National ideals," he says in "The National Being," "are the possession of a few people only." That is an argument for aristocracy.
Yet we must spread them in wide commonalty over Ireland if we are to create a civilisation worthy of our hopes and our ages of struggle and sacrifice to attain the power to build. We must spread them in wide commonalty because it is certain that democracy will prevail in Ireland. The aristocratic classes with traditions of government, the manufacturing classes with economic experience, will alike be secondary in Ireland to the small farmers and the wage-earners in the towns. We must rely on the ideas common among our people, and on their power to discern among their countrymen the aristocracy of character and intellect.
With the deletion of the word "Ireland" and the substitution of the word "America," that quotation might stand just as effective for the United States as for Ireland. Why is it certain that democracy will prevail in Ireland? Because the small farmers and the wage-earners in the towns will take precedence over the aristocracy and the manufacturing classes! I do not follow that argument. I have seen nothing in England or America or Ireland or France to convince me that if the small farmers and the wage-earners in the towns were authoritative they would be any more democratic than the aristocratic or the manufacturing classes. I have seen much to make me feel certain that they will use their authority as implacably in their own interests as any aristocrat or manufacturer ever used or ever will use his. Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in his book, "Irish Impressions," produces this argument in favour of peasant proprietorship: