From antagonist to protagonist: ‘Democracy’ and ‘people’ in British parliamentary debates, 1775–1885

Abstract

Abstract ‘Democracy’ is a central word of our current political lexicon, often defined as ‘the power of the people’. However, in 19th century Britain, ‘democracy’ was not characterized by the rule of the ‘people’ but by the power of lower classes, of the ‘populace’ and the ‘mob’. In political discourse, and especially in parliamentary debates, the ‘people’ were an antagonist of ‘democracy’, not its protagonist. To support these statements, this article analyses British parliamentary debates between 1775 and 1885, through both a ‘distant reading’ with the help of corpus linguistics tools and a closer examination of certain key debates and actors. After a brief overview of the methodology, three crucial periods of British political history are analysed. (1) The end of the 18th century, where the impact of the French Revolution on democratic vocabulary is measured. (2) The debates surrounding the 1832 Reform Act, in which the explicit differentiation between the constitutional ‘people’ and the democratic ‘mob’ is drawn out by Whigs and Tories alike. (3) The Second Reform Act (1867), also presented as a ‘popular’ measure, and not a step towards ‘democracy’. In conclusion, the adoption of the democratic vocabulary by British Members of Parliament is traced to the 1880s, notably with the emergence of the idea of ‘Tory democracy’.