Democracy and empire; with studies of their psychological, economic, and moral foundations

Front matter

ja

GHS'

CORNELL

Preface

This book is the product of a nearly continuous interest which, for more than ten years, I have felt in the problems of "Democracy" and of "Empire." My studies of theoretical sociology long ago led me to believe that the combination of small states into larger political aggregates must continue until all the semi-civilized, barbarian, and savage communities of the world are brought under the protection jof the larger civilized nations. I became convinced also f that the future of civilization will depend largely, and peri haps chiefly, upon the predominant influence of either the

t English-speaking people of the world or of the Russian

I Empire, according as one or the other of these two gigantic

i powers wins the advantage in the international struggle for I existence. At the same time, I remained convinced that ; the democratic tendencies of the nineteenth century are not

likely to be checked or thwarted in our own or in future I \ generations. Every phase of this democratic movement has*^ strongly interested me ; and I have found myself viewing it from the standpoints of industry, of politics, and of education. I could not cease my study of these problems until I had tried to see them in their mutually qualifying relations, to see how the different modes of democracy sometimes limit and sometimes strengthen one another, and to understand how it is that democracy and empire, paradoxical as such a relationship seems, are really only correlative aspects of the evolution of mankind. As a student and teacher of

Vi PREFACE

sociology, I found it necessary to go even one step further, and attempt to discover the relations of these phenomena of democracy and empire to the psychology of society and to the fundamental economic and ethical motives of human effort.

The result of it all is a volume that, whatever its defects, which I know are many, may at least claim the merit of attempting to look at the problems of democracy and empire in a broad way, and with due reference to the interaction of many motives and tendencies that too often are studied by the method of isolation, with consequences of distorted view or of pessimistic feeling, not justified by fact. Inasmuch as some of the papers which f oUow have appeared from time to time in periodicals, while others were prepared and delivered as lectures or addresses, that have not hitherto been published, I have thought best to retain, as far as possible, their original form. In form, therefore, the volume is a collection of essays and addresses; but, in reality, it is much more. The several papers could as weU have been presented as successive chapters, for they are logically related parts of a whole. A definite thesis is stated in the first paper, and a definite conclusion is reached in the last. The intermediate papers are successive steps in a continuous argument.

I wish to express my obligations to editors and publishers who have kindly permitted me to reproduce matter that has appeared in periodicals. For the convenience of students, a record of dates of publication of essays and of delivery of lectures will be found at the end of the volume.

I am under renewed obligations to my colleagues of the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia University. For many excellent suggestions I owe thanks to Mr. George W. Morgan, who has helped me in the preparation of manuscript, and to Mr. Arthur M. Day, who has kindly read my

PREFACE VU

proofs, but who must not be held responsible for errors that have escaped detection. My son, who made the full index for my "Principles of Sociology," has prepared for this book the less detailed index that I have deemed sufficient.

Neither this volume, nor any other of my books, could have been written in the brief intermissions of labours as varied as mine have been (both during the ten years that were given to daily newspaper work, and during the subsequent years that have been given to teaching) but for the untiring cooperation of my wife, to whom above all others I am indebted.

New Yobk, January, 1900.

CONTENTS I

The Mind op the Mai«y 43

V The Costs op Progress .67

VI Industrial Democracy 97

vn

The Trusts and the Public 135

vm

The Bailroads and the S-eate 145

IX Public Revenue and Civic Virtue 157

X

Some Results of the Freedom of Women .... 165

ix "

X CONTENTS

XI

pAes

The Nature and Condpct op Political Majorities • . 177

XII The Destinies of Democract 197

xm

The Relation op Social Democracy to the Higher Education 215

XIV The Popular Instruction Most Necessary in a Democracy 229

XV

The Shadow and the Substance op Republican Government 249

XVI

The Consent op the Governed 257

xvn xvm

XIX

The Ideals of Nations 31S

XX

The Gospel op Non-resistance ....... 341

I

DEMOCEACT AND EMPIEE

The world has been accustomed to tMnk of democracy and empire as antagonistic phenomena. It has assumed that democracy could be established only on the ruins of empire, and that the establishment of empire necessarily meant the overthrow of liberty by a triumphant reign of absolutism. Yet, in our day, we are witnessing the simultaneous develop- • ment of both democracy and empire. The two most powerful nations of the world are becoming, year by year, more democratic in their local life, in their general legislation, and in their social institutions. Nevertheless, for a generation, both have been continually extending their territorial boundaries, absorbing outlying states or colonial possessions, and developing a complicated system of general or imperial administration. Not only so, but, under that government which has carried this policy to its highest perfection, the coexistence of democracy and empire has become an approximately perfect blending. Imperial Britain is not merely a combination of democracy with empire in a fortuitous association. The union is organic; the whole is a democratic empire. Not only has the home country, England, become in the last twenty-five years a highly democratic community, not only IS the same thing true also of Australia and of Canada ; but also in ways which, though not quite so obvious, are not less real, it is becoming true of India, of the African colonies, and of the lesser dependencies. Not only to her colonial children of English blood does England say, as Kipling puts it, " And the Law that ye make shall be law after the rule of your lands," but practically she says the same thing also to dwellers in the Indian village community and in the islands jOf the sea. As long as they conform to the English sense of fthe sacredness of life, and to the English requirement of social order, England is willing to respect their local customs and their religious faiths, and to say to all alike, " The Law that ye make shall be law, and I do not press my will." At the same time, the imperial bond grows stronger, with the strengthening of that loyalty to the imperial throne which England requires in exchange for the protection that she extends to her dependencies and for the order that she establishes among once warring factions.

« So long as The Blood endures, I shall know that your good is mine : ye shall feel that my strength is yours."

What is the explanation of this blending of democracy with empire, a thing to most minds strange and to many incredible ? Like many another fact in the moral, as in the material world, it can be accounted for only through a study of its evolution.

Before the dawn of history, mankind had learned one fundamental lesson touching the conditions that render human society possible. Before any state was formed, whUe still the only known form of social organization was that which made blood kinship the basis of membership in the tribe, men had learned that social cohesion, practical cooperation, and unity of purpose, rest on some kind of similarity among the cooperating individuals. They were intensely alive to the importance of that " homogeneity " which has suddenly become so interesting to our modern anti-expansionists. They realized that human beings too much unlike could no more get on together peaceably than the warring elements of flood and fire could combine in nature. But their experience of homogeneity was of a narrow sort, and their ideas about it were of the most simple description. The only homogeneity of which they could form any definite conception was

THE DEMOCBATIC EMPIRE 5

that of blood relationship. Men born of the same mother — brethren in the literal sense — could understand one another, could wish the same thing, could work by like methods, and, in fine, could live together as a community. That strangers might come together and organize a stable social group — much more, that men of different tongues and races might live under one government, would have been propositions to their minds inconceivable.

When, however, with the beginnings of commerce and the development of mechanical arts, tribal communities that had grown to the proportions of a town were invaded by adventurers who had broken away from their ancient clan associations, or whose clan organizations had been broken up by war, and when the interlopers began to multiply and to acquire wealth, it became necessary to devise a scheme of government under which they could be included in the body politic. The device that succeeded after many experi-j ments had failed, was that of a legal fiction, whereby all whq lived within the territorial boundaries occupied by a localized tribe became nominally — for political, military, and fiscal purposes — members of a purely nominal tribe, irrespective of their blood relationship. It was a scheme of wholesale adoption, or, as we should now say, of naturalization.

Thus it was discovered that men of different origins could live together amicably, and could cooperate in public undertakings ; and, for the moment, the radical minds of their generation may have imagined that homogeneity had ceased to be a factor of any consequence in social organization, and that thenceforth communities could develop without attention to such limiting requirements. In this conclusion, however, if such they reached, they were wholly mistaken. The community had not ceased to be made up of resembling individuals. All that had happened had been the substitution of a^^^ new and broader kind of resemblance for the old blood kinship, as a basis of public life. The resemblance now essential * consisted in mental and moral qualities, in capacities for practical cooperation, in unity of purpose, and in agreement upon methods of common activity. Mental homogeneity, or like-mindedness,Jiq4- taken,, in men's thoughts the important place formerly held by homogeneity in a physical sense.

1^* sooner was this fact grasped by the leading spirits of the age than they were seized by a passion to perfect thisnewer type of homogeneity and to make it as complete as had been the old homogeneity of blood. They perceived that, through the contact of commerce and politics, through imitation and comradeship, men originally unlike in many important particulars would undergo assimilation and would approach a common type. That assimilation could be hastened and that social cohesion could be made stronger, generation by generation, through the systematic development of a public policy, was a natural thought. So it came to pass that governments presently adopted certain policies that were characteristic of all early civilizations. The first step was an effort to bring under one central administration all adjoining regions which, together with the dominant city state, formed a natural geographic unity, and those populations which spoke allied languages and could easily be assimilated to the common type. Thus was created the enlarged or national state, in contrast to the small city state which had been its nucleus. Through this policy a strong military power was developed, and minute military regulation was extended throughout society. Mere military government, however, was not enough to establish that perfect homogeneity of mental and moral type which was desired. Religion was still the dominant interest of the majority of men; and so religious unification also was attempted. Family, gentile, and local gods throughout the nation were subordinated to the national god represented by the king^ and the organized priesthood of the dominant city. The medley of ancient faiths was blended in a national, organic religion, which, by its sanctions, was made to uphold the authority of the central power. Then, finally, manners and customs, forms of dress and ceremonial, even amusements, were in like manner subjected to a minute regulation, all in the interests of that perfect homogeneity of mental and moral type which now was believed to be the requisite basis of a true and strong national unity.

Such was the fijstj^ge of civilization. It was the establishment of political and social homogeneity by coercivel methods, supplementing the spontaneous method of assimij lation through social and commercial intercourse, by means of communication, imitation, and the interchange of ideas.

Often this policy was developed into a creation of va^ military empires. Distant lands and wholly alien peoples were brought by conquest under the rule of a victorious nation, and compelled to accept religion, law, and manners from the conqueror.

This first stage of civilization, rude, tyrannical, often brutal as it was, accomplished one inestimable good : it put an end to intertribal wars and to more serious contests between petty states. Notwithstanding the enormous drain of men and treasure into the imperial armies, it gradually released larger numbers of men and greater stores of capital to engage in the pursuits of peace. The homogeneity of belief and habit which, to a great extent, it succeeded in creating, prepared men to live together amicably with comparatively little governmental restraint ; and so the very methods which at first absorbed men in the activities of militarism, presently released vast stores of intellectual and physical energy for other interests.

And so a se^^isu^ka^ge of civilization was ushered in. Men became critical : they began to demand release from formal bonds which were no longer necessary to their well-being, as they themselves conceived it. The spirit of revolt and of revolution grew and waxed strong. The imperial bond was weakened, and vast territories became an easy prey to invading barbarians. Chaos and anarchy slowly gave way to the formation of a new order ; and through successiye developments — of feudalism, of the growth of petty principalities, and of new city states — new political forms were slowly evolved. Throughout all these changes, the spirit of liberty, often suppressed, sometimes well-nigh crushed, was, after all, surely growing and coming to its maturity; until at length it swept all before it in the vast movements of the Renaissance, of the Reformation, and of the revolutionary struggle, out of which emerged the practical principles of personal liberty, freedom of contract, and constitutional law.

Men, however, had not forgotten that homogeneity of some sort is essential to social unity. Over and over again, they had seen its importance in the days of feudalism and of the slow emergence of new national states from the ruins of the Roman dominion ; and over and over they had attempted to reassert the policies of early civilization in measures of religious persecution, in restraints of trade, and in sumptuary legislation. The outcome of these gigantic struggles was a conviction that liberty and social cohesion could coexist only in states of relatively small dimensions, with welldefined natural boundaries, and peopled by men of substantially one blood and type of mind. The doctrines of local self-government and of state rights were the fruits which the second stage of civilization bore in political philosophy.

No sooner, however, had men comfortably settled themselves to the belief that the final and ideal form of social organization had been reached, than another marvellous change began to take place. Under the opportunities secured to them by liberty, men were stimulated to put forth their energies to the utmost. Enterprise was quickened, and innumerable forms of voluntary cooperation sprang into existence. Invention, discovery, and exploration revealed possibilities of material weU-being of which the race had never dreamed, and wealth began to increase and population to multiply at a rate never before known. Soon the new enterprise and the growing population began to threaten to overflow the relatively narrow bounds that had been set by the political philosophy of liberalism to the republican state. For a time the need of room in which to expand was perhaps felt rather than seen ; but presently came the clear perception also, that by an almost paradoxical reaction, the industrial and social consequences of liberty would bring about fundamental changes in the organization of states, just as, at an earlier time, the policy of militarism . had brought about the reactions which caused its own overthrow. These conditions manifested themselves chiefly in those countries which had become most free — namely, England and the United States. It was in the latter that expansion began on a large scale and in which its results first became apparent. Moved more perhaps by instinct than by reasoned-out opinions, the American people added to their Northwest Territory the Louisiana and Florida purchases, Oregon, Texas, and California. Almost before the most far-seeing of men realized what was happening, the compact little nation of the thirteen original states had become a continental domain ; and the homogeneous population of English blood was becoming thef most heterogeneous admixture of nationalities of every speechf and faith and political tradition to be found on the face of the earth.

What, then, happened ? Did disintegration begin anew ? Did the heterogeneous elements so conflict in interest and contend in activity that national unity was destroyed ? On the contrary, when the influence of that element of discord which, from the formation of the Union, had existed in the widely unlike economic and social systems of North and Souta culminated in the Civil War, it was discovered that theip had grown up in this vast heterogeneous people a nationll feeling, a spirit of oneness, the like of which had nev4r before been seen in all human history. It crushed rebellion; it reinstated in the sisterhood of commonwealths the seceding states; it extended amnesty to all; and again it secured to all the blessings of equal protection, equal privilege, and personal freedom. Furthermore, when all this had been accomplished, no tendency was seen to revert to those earlier policies of civilization whereby the homogeneity necessary to social unity was perfected through coercive means. No suggestion was made that, throughout this vast domain, men should be compelled to confess the same faith, to worship in the same way, to dress in prescribed costumes, or to amuse themselves according to forms prescribed by state authority. Without knowing exactly why, the people had discovered that, notwithstanding the apparent and, in many particulars, the real diversity of interests and ideas — to say nothing of the diversity of nationalities — some mode of unity had been created among them which was quite sufficient to hold them together in political and industrial organization as firmly as any ancient tribe had been held together by its unity of blood, or any ancient nation by its unity of ritual and ceremonial.

What, now, is the explanation of so strange a phenomenon? If homogeneity is essential to social cohesion — if, nevertheless, the ancient unity of blood or the less ancient unity of faith and practice is no longer requisite, what is the homogeneity which has taken their place and has proved to be so all-sufficient that not only may liberty and social unity coexist, but that they may even coexist and become ever more nearly perfect in a nation of vast territorial area to which no ultimate bounds can be predicted in assurance that they are final ? Why, in short, is it that to-day a national life is possible, wherein it has become wholly unnecessary to insist upon any of those limitations in the interests of either security or liberty which, in earlier days, were accepted as the very axioms of political philosophy ?

The answer is, that the homogeneity which now underlies all successful national life, or the wider life of vast empires like that of Great Britain, is an ethical one. Kinship, faith, and habit — all have served their time as the cohesive bonds of peoples whom, step by step, they have prepared for the larger life of that human community in which agreement upon two or three principles of aspiration and conduct prove now to be a sufficient basis of vast, intricate, and smoothly working organization. An eth ical like-mindedness has taken the place of all earlier and simpler modes of resemblance, as the loundation oi human society.

In what, theni does this ethical like-mindedness consist? Essentially it consists in a common loyalty to the common judgment and will, in a common willingness to share a common destiny, and in a common conviction of the priceless value of individual, religious, and local liberty. Given mental and moral agreement in these particulars, and a nation of any territorial extent, of any admixture of blood, of interests, of religions, can wax strong generation by generation, while yet becoming more free and more diversified in its social organization. »

We have now the principle by which to explain- the wonderful phenomenon of the democratic empire. It is a corollary of this principle that, when a nation makes itself the nucleus of an empire, step by step extending its sway over distant lands and peoples successively annexed, it can continue to be democratic ; it can become, decade after i decade, more democratic; it can even permit its colonies or dependencies to be democratic, while at the same time maintaining a strong imperial government for purposes of a common defence ; all on the one inviolable condition that, as it lengthens the reach of government, it must curtail the functions of government. The small local community, homogeneous in nearly every respect — in blood, in traditions, in beliefs, in interests — may successfully conduct a local or municipal government of highly diversified functions. Through that government it may not only protect life and property, but also build roads and bridges, operate street railways, water-works, and lighting appliances, and maintain schools and libraries. But a national government, if it would respect liberty while maintaining political cohesion, must leave most of these functions to local communities or to voluntary enterprise. An imperial government must be yet more general, if it is not to suppress freedom and the democratic spirit. It must confine itself practically to three things, namely : the imperial defence, the suppression of conflict between one part of the empire and another, and insistence that local administration shall come up to a certain standard in its protection of life and property, and in its respect for enlightenment. Doing these things and only these, it can leave each component part of the empire to evolve its own law and its own administration in its own way, — to become, in short, as democratic as the spirit and the experience of the people will permit.

This, then, is the secret of the democratic empire, — of that empire which England has already brought to a wonderful perfection, of that empire which the United States is destined to create, and which we hope may, in the coming centuries, be as strong, as free, as broad as any that the world has ever seen. The ancient empire, governed in the conviction that identity of belief and similarity of practice were essential to the homogeneity without which no society can long hold together, endeavoured to establish a perfect unity of faith and of daily habit by coercive measures. The modern empire, governed in the belief that a common loyalty to certain common interests and fundamental principles is an all-sufficient mode of homogeneity for the stability of a more complex civilization than any that existed in ancient times, insists only upon such loyalty, and trusts to the spontaneous intercourse of men in the pursuit of their daily vocations to bring about a further assimilation which ultimately will perfect the human race in the spirit of brotherhood, under the single law of liberty.