James Fenimore Cooper on demagogues

About a week and a half ago—the timing is important—I was rearranging some shelves in my library and riffled the pages of an oft-forgotten book on politics. I stopped and flipped back to a chapter heading I thought I had seen. Ten minutes later I had finished reading the chapter; I’ve revisited it several times since.

The book is 19th century novelist James Fenimore Cooper’s 1838 treatise The American Democrat, and the chapter that arrested my attention is entitled “On Demagogues.”

Cooper begins with a basic definition:

A demagogue, in the strict signification of the word, is “a leader of the rabble.”

This is, he notes, “a Greek compound.” The word’s specific component parts are demos, “the people” or “the mob,” and agogos, “leader,” from a proto-Indo-European root for words meaning “to draw out” or even “to drive.” Compare pedagogue, ”leader of children,” i.e. a teacher.

Cooper considers what demagogues might be after:

The peculiar office of a demagogue is to advance his own interests, by affecting a deep devotion to the interests of the people. Sometimes the object is to indulge malignancy, unprincipled and selfish men submitting but to two governing motives, that of doing good to themselves, and that of doing harm to others. The true theatre of a demagogue is a democracy, for the body of the community possessing the power, the master he pretends to serve is best able to reward his efforts.

How does one identify a demagogue? Cooper is particularly attentive to this topic, since “it is all important to distinguish between those who labor in behalf of the people on the general account, and those who labor in behalf of the people on their own account.”

The motive of the demagogue may usually be detected in his conduct. The man who is constantly telling the people that they are unerring in judgment, and that they have all power, is a demagogue. Bodies of men being composed of individuals, can no more be raised above the commission of error, than individuals themselves, and, in many situations, they are more likely to err, from self-excitement and the division of responsibility. The power of the people is limited by the fundamental laws, or the constitution, the rights and opinions of the minority, in all but those cases in which a decision becomes indispensable, being just as sacred as the rights and opinions of the majority; else would a democracy be, indeed, what its enemies term it, the worst species of tyranny. In this instance, the people are flattered, in order to be led; as in kingdoms, the prince is blinded to his own defects, in order to extract favor from him.

The demagogue always puts the people before the constitution and the laws, in face of the obvious truth that the people have placed the constitution and the laws before themselves.

The local demagogue does not distinguish between the whole people and a part of the people, and is apt to betray his want of principles by contending for fancied, or assumed rights, in favor of a county, or a town, though the act is obviously opposed to the will of the nation. This is a test that the most often betrays the demagogue, for while loudest in proclaiming his devotion to the majority, he is, in truth, opposing the will of the entire people, in order to effect his purposes with a part.

The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management, instead of manifesting the frank, fearless qualities of the democracy he so prodigally professes.

Also dangerous are the demagogue’s enablers, men who deliberately take on the traits of the demagogue or of the people whose support they covet by debasing themselves:

There is a large class of political men in this country, who, while they scarcely merit the opprobrium of being termed demagogues, are not properly exempt from the imputation of falling into some of their most dangerous vices. These are they, whose habits, and tastes, and better opinions, indeed, are all at variance with vulgar errors and vulgar practices, but, who imagine it a necessary evil in a democracy to defer to prejudices, and ignorance, and even to popular jealousies and popular injustice, that a safe direction may be given to the publick mind.

“Such men deceive themselves,” Cooper comments.

How, then, to identify sincere leaders when democracies breed demagogues like a basement breeds mildew?

The man who maintains the rights of the people on pure grounds . . . does not flatter the people, even while he defends them, for he knows that flattery is a corrupting and dangerous poison. Having nothing to conceal, he is frank and fearless, as are all men with the consciousness of right motives. He oftener chides than commends, for power needs reproof and can dispense with praise.

And:

The considerate, and modest, and just-minded man, of whatever social class, will view all this differently. In asserting his own rights, he respects those of others; in indulging his own tastes, he is willing to admit there may be superior; in pursuing his own course, in his own manner, he knows his neighbor has an equal right to do the same; and, most of all, is he impressed with the great moral truths, that flatterers are inherently miscreants, that fallacies never fail to bring their punishments, and that the empire of God is reason.

Why does this matter? Because the truth matters, and these questions are not of merely temporal importance. Cooper:

All good men desire the truth, and, on all publick occasions on which it is necessary to act at all, the truth would be the most certain, efficient, and durable agency in defeating falsehoods, whether of prejudices, reports, or principles. The perception of truth is an attribute of reason, and the ground-work of all institutions that claim to be founded in justice, is this high quality. Temporary convenience, and selfish considerations, beyond a doubt, are both favored by sometimes closing the eyes to the severity of truth, but in nothing is the sublime admonition of God in his commandments, where he tells us that he “will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generations of their children,” more impressively verified, than in the inevitable punishments that await every sacrifice of truth.

There’s more. You can read the entire chapter at the link above, and you can find the the entirety of The American Democrat online at Wikisource here. I first learned about Cooper’s political writing in a chapter of Russell Kirk’s study The Conservative Mind, which is worth your while.