Definitions of Democracy and Related Terms
By W. H. M.
3762 — What Is Democracy? Papacy? Paganism? Huguenot? There are some questions which I see in political papers and elsewhere which puzzle me. What is Papacy? and what is democracy? and what is paganism? and what and how was a Huguenot? What did they start from? W. H. M. "Democracy" comes from the Greek "demos," the people. It is a government by the people. This government is not a pure democracy, however, but a representative republic. The Democratic Party hold practically to the same ideas that the Republicans do. The people rule through representatives elected by themselves; and that is what democracy generally means at the present time,—the ruling of the people rather than the ruling of classes. It is opposed to autocracy, the ruling by one man. There are different views of the Papacy. With some it is identical with the Roman Catholic Church. But in the use which we make of it, it means more than the Roman Catholic Church; it means that system of Church and State which has been developed through the Roman Catholic Church, and its union with the powers of earth. The Roman Catholic Church alone is an ecclesiastical system; the Papacy is that ecclesiastical system connected with the State. Paganism, generally speaking, is the worship of false divinities, or idolatrous worship; from "pagan," a worshiper of false gods; pagan beliefs or practises; heathenism. A Huguenot is a French Protestant of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They suffered great persecutions during the religious wars of these centuries. Many were massacred on St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1572. Religious and civil freedom was granted to them by the edict of Nantes by France in 1598; but when that was revoked in 1685, very many of them emigrated to England, to Germany, to the Netherlands, to Switzerland, to South America, and to the North American colonies, so that quite a number of the good people of this land were descendants of the Huguenots. They are simply French Protestants, moral, industrious, and intelligent. The word may have sprung from the personal name "Hugo," or from "hugu," mind.