Modern democracies

Front matter

MODERN DEMOCRACIES

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

Preface

Many years ago, at a time when schemes of political reform were being copiously discussed in England, mostly on general principles, but also with references, usually vague and disconnected, to history and to events happening in other countries, it occurred to me that something might be done to provide a solid basis for argument and judgment by examining a certain number of popular governments in their actual working, comparing them with one another, and setting forth the various merits and defects which belonged to each. As I could not find that any such comparative study had been undertaken, I formed the idea of attempting it, and besides visiting Switzerland and other parts of Europe, betook myself to the United States and Canada, to Spanish America and Australia and New Zealand, in search of materials, completing these journeys shortly before the War of 1914 broke out. The undertaking proved longer and more toilsome than had been expected; and frequent interruptions due to the War have delayed the publication of the book until now, when in some countries conditions are no longer what they were when I studied them eight or ten years ago. This fact, however, though it needs to be mentioned, makes less difference than might be supposed, because the conditions that have existed in those countries, and especially in Erance, the United States, and Australia, from 1914 to 1920 have been so far abnormal that conclusions could not well be drawn from them, and it seems safer to go back to the earlier and more typical days. Neither is it necessary for the purpose here in view to bring the record of events in each country up to date ; for it is not current politics but democracy as a form of government that I seek to describe. Events that happened ten years ago may be for this particular purpose just as instructive as if they were happening to-day.

The term Democracy has in recent years been loosely used to denote sometimes a state of society, sometimes a state of viii MODERN DEMOCRACIES

mind, sometimes a quality in manners. It has oe en-

crusted with all sorts of associations attractive or repulsive, ethical or poetical, or even religious. Bnt Democracy really means nothing more nor less than the rule of the whole people expressing their sovereign will by their votes. It shows different features in different countries, because the char. and habits of peoples are different: and these features are part of the history of each particular country. But it also shows some features which arc everywhere similar, beca us e due to the fact that supreme power rests with the voting multitude. It is of the Form of Government as i Form of Government — that is to say, of the features which democracies have in common — that this book treats, describing the phenomena as they appear in their daily working to an observer who is living in the midst of them and watching them, as one standing in ■ great factory sees the play and hears the clang of the machinery all around him. The

actual factfl are what I wish to describe, and i* as if

uothing could be simpler, for they arc all around us. Bui

the facts are obscured to most people by the half-as-imilated ideas and BOnorOUS Of seductive phrases that till the air; and few realize exactly what are the realities beneath the phrases.

To those persons wh<>, as poHtunans, ox journalists, or otherwise, have been u inside politics," the realities of their own

country are familiar, and this familiarity enables such experts to get a fair [ mptC B Si OB of the facts in Other Countries. But I Is large paitS Of every public that may

be sail 1 which the cynical old statesman in Disraeli'i novel CotUarini Ft laid to his ardent sen who wished to get

away from wordfl to ides i ideas are correct ones, and

what are correct do one can tain; but with Wordfl we

govern men."

The book is not meant to propound theories. Novelties are not possible in a subject the literature of which b with Plato and Aristotle and ha- heen enriched by thousands of pens since their day. What I desire is, QOi to impress upon my readers views of my Own, but to supply them with facts, and (so far as I can) with explanations of facts on which they can reflect and from which they can draw their own conclusions.

I am not sufficiently enamoured of my own opinions to

PREFACE ix

k to propagate them, and have sought to repress the pessimism of experience, for it is not really helpful by way of warning to the younger generation, whatever relief its expression may give to the reminiscent mind. The saddest memories of political life are of moments at which one had to stand by when golden opportunities were being lost, to see the wrong thing done when it would have been easy to do the right thing. Bui this observation was made by a Persian to a Greek at a dinner-party, the night before the battle of Plataea twenty-four centuries ago, and the world has nevertheless made some advances since then.

Though 1 have written the book chiefly from personal observations made in the countries visited, there are of course many treatises to which I should gladly have referred, were it not that the number to be cited would be bo large as

to perplex rather than help the reader who is not a Specialist, while the specialist would not need them. My greatest difficulty lias heen that of compression. In order to keep the hook within reasonable limits I have had to turn reluctantly away from many seductive by-paths, from history, from forms of political theory, — such as those of the conception of the State and the nature of Sovereignty, — from constitutional and legal questions, and above all from economic topics and those schemes of social reconstruction which

have been coming to the front in nearly every country — matters which now excite the keenest interest and are the battleground of current politic-. Though frequently compelled to mention such schemes I have abstained from any expressions of opinion, not merely for the sake of avoiding controversy, but because it seems to me, after a long life spent in study — and study means unlearning as well as learning — to be a student's first duty to retain an open mind upon subjects he has not found time to probe to the bottom. Even when one thinks a view unsound or a scheme unworkable, one must regard all honest efforts to improve this unsatisfactory world with a sympathy which recognizes how many things need to be changed, and how many doctrines once held irrefragable need to be modified in the light of supervenient facts. What we want to-day is a better comprehension by each side in economic controversies of the attitude and arguments of the other. Reconcilements are x MODERN DEMOCRACIES

not always possible, but comprehension and appreciation should be possible.

The absorption of men's minds with ideas and schemes of social reconstruction has diverted attention from those problems of free government which occupied men's minds when the flood-tide of democracy was rising seventy or eighty years ago; and it has sometimes seemed to me in writing this book that it was being addressed rather to the last than to the present generation. That generation busied itself with institutions; this generation is bent rather upon the purposes which institutions may be made to servo. Nevertheless the study of institutions has not 1< importance. Let us

think of the difference it would have made to Europe if the countries engaged in the Great War had in 191 1 been all of them, as some of them were, oligarchies or autocracies; or if all of them had been, as some were, democracies. Or let us think of what may be the results within the next thirty ; of setting up democracies in oountries that have heretofore formed part of the Russian and Anstro-Hungarian "Monarchies; or (to take a still in- • 1 i nir case) of trying the experiment of popular government in India, in China, in Russia, in Egypt) in Persia, in the Philippine Inlands. If any of the bold plans of social reconstruction QO* in the aiiare attempted in practice they will apply new tests to democratic principles and inevitably modify their working. There is still plenty of room f«»r ation, plenty of factto be observed and of thinking to be done. The material*

are always growing. Every generalization now made ii only

provisional, and will have to be some day qualified: every

book that is written will before long be OUt of date, except as a record of what were deemed to he salient phenomena at the time when it. was written. Bach of US who write-

describes the progress mankind was making with if

ments in government ai he saw them; each hands OH the torch to his successor, and the succession is infinite, for the experiments are never completed.

It is, I hope, needless for me to disclaim any intention to serve any cause or party, for a man must have profited little by his experience of political life if he is not heartily glad to be rid of the reticences which a party system imposes and free to state with equal candour both sides of every

PREFACE xi

case. This is what I have tried to do; and where it has been harder to obtain information on a controversial issue from one side than from the other I have stated that to be so, and gone no further in recording a conclusion than the evidence seemed to warrant.

My cordial thanks are due to a few English friends whose views and criticisms have aided me, and to many friends in France and Switzerland, the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, who have been kind enough to read through the proofs relating to the country to which each of them respectively belongB and have favoured me with their comments. The list of these friends is Long, and their names would carry weight; but as their comments were given in confidence, and I alone am responsible for errors of new and fact — errors which I cannot hope to have avoided — I do not nana' those friends, contenting myself with this most grateful acknowledgment of help without which I should not have ventured into so wide a field.

BRYCE.

( 'hrishrxis I.

Contents

VOL. 1

TART I

CONSIDERATIONS APPLICABLE TO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT IX GENERAL

Part II Some Democracies In Their Working

XVI The Republics of Antiquity : Athens .... 165 XVII The Republics of Spanish America .... 187

FRANCE

XVni Land and History 208

XIX The Frame of Government: President and

Senate 223

XX The Chamber of Deputies 240

XXI Cabinet Ministers and Local Party Organizations 261

xiii

XIV

MODERN DEMOCRACIES

CHAPTER PAGE

XXII Judicial and Civil Admin istration i_'Tl

XXin Local Government

XXIV Public Opinion

XXV The Tone of Public Life

XXVI What Democracy has done for France . . 309

SWITZERLAND

XXVII The People and their Hbtosy

XXVIII Political Institutions

XXIX Direct Legislation by the People : I i u

AND INITIATIVE

XXX Political Parties 4os

XXXI Public Opinion

XXXIII

XXXIV

XXXV

XXXVI

XXXVII

CANADA The Country and tin . 455

THE People and the PlBim Working of the QOYWrMOT .

The Action of IYin.i< <)pini«»\ .

General Review <-e (\v\dia\ PoUTl B

177 487 end oi vol. i

ERRATA

VOL. I

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•inoe tl a- printed, been reieed to 27*000 Emnca ■ year.

Page 278, last lint' hut OBfl of t i • - 1 . • , aftrr "jury" ins.rt t In* words "indeed

IK. lit'.''

Page 802, line it. for "<>f a" rend "ehoeen by."

Page 814, line 88, for "Lonii \\v rend "Lonii \iv "

PAST I

CONSIDERATIONS APPLICABLE TO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

IX (1KXKUAL

VOL. I

CHAPTEB I l.\l BODUC1 "i;v

A « i \ 1 1 i: j ago there was in the Old World only one tiny Bpol in which the working of democracy could be studied. A few of the ancient rural cantons of Switzerland had recovered their freedom after the fall of Napoleon, and were governing themselves as they bad done from the earlier Middle Ages, bul they wen small and their conditions

peculiar to furnish instruction to larger communities or

throw much liidit OE popular ir«»vrnmii'iit in general. N"

where else in Europe did the people rule. Britain enjoyed far wider freedom than any part of the European Continent, hut her local as well as central government wafl -till oligarchic When the American Republic began its national life with the t'rauiiuL r and adoption of the Federal Constitution in 17 n 7 v '.', the only materials which history furnished to it- founders were those which the republics of antiquity had provided, bo it was to these materials that both those founders and the men of the first French Revolution constantly re ourred for examples to be followed or avoided. Nobody Bince Plutarch bad gathered the pattern- of republican civic virtue which orators like Vergniaud had to invoke, Nobody Bince Aristotle bad treated of constitutions on the line- Alexander Hamilton desired for hi- guidance.

Willi 17 s '. 1 the world passed into a new phase, hut the ten years that followed were for France years of revolution,

in which democracy had no chance of approving its quality.

It was only in the United States that popular governments could be profitably studied, and when Tocqueville studied them in 1827 they had scarcely begun to show some of their most characteristic feature-.

Within the hundred years that now lie behind us what changes have passed upon the world! Xearly all the monarchies of the Old World have been turned into democracies. The States of the American Union have grown from thirteen

II to forty-eight. While twenty new republics have sprang up in the Western hemisphere, five new democracies have developed out of colonies within the British dominions. There are now more than one hundred representative il blies at work all over the earth legislating For self-governing communities; and the proceedings of nearly all of thes< recorded in the press. Thus the materials for a study of free governments have boon and are accumulating so fast that the most diligent student cam p pace with the

course of political evolution in more than a few out of these many countries.

A not less significant change d the universal ac-

ceptance of democracy as the normal and natural form of government. Seventy y, | those who are now old

can well remember, the approaching rise of the masses to power was regarded bj the educated classes of Europe as a menace to order an d prosperity. Tl word Democracy

awakened dislike or fear. WOW it il I word of pi

Popular power is wel died, worshipped. Tin

whom it repels or alarms rarely avow their sentiment

have aim. d to study : mens beeaa now

seem to have become part of the established order of thi The old question, — What is the beet form rnment I

is almost obsolete 1" tre of b been

shifting. Tt is not the nature of d< ij, nor even the

variety of the shapes it wear-, t! | i day in debate, hut

rather the purposes to which it may he turned, t!

and economic changes it may be need to I its uni-

versal acceptance is not i tribute to the smoothness <>f its working, for discontent rife, while in some

countries the revolutionary spirit is passing into forms heretofore undreamt of, our of which loom-, up

spectre. The time seems to have arrived when the actualities of democratic government, in it- di forms, should be investigated, and when the conditions most favourable to its success should receive more attention than student distinguished from politicians, have been bestowing upon them. Now that the abundant and ever-increasing data

facilitate a critical study, it SO happens that current, ev supply new reasons why such a study should he under! forthwith. Some of these reasons . mention.

Chap. I Introductory

We have just seen four great empires in Europe — as well as a fifth in Asia — all ruled by ancient dynasties, crash to the ground, and we see efforts made to build up out of the ruins new States, each of which is enacting for itself a democratic constitution.

We see backward populations, to which the very conception of political freedom had been unknown, summoned to attempt the tremendous task of creating Belf-governing institution-. China, India, and Russia contain, taken together, one half or more the population of the globe, so the problem of providing \r<'<- government for diem is the Largest problem statesmanship has ever had to boIvi

The uew functions thai are being thrust upon govern-

DientS in every civilized country, make it more than ever

necessary that their machinery should he so constructed as to discharge th< se functions efficiently and in full accord with

the popular wish.

And lastly, we he more advanced peoples,

dissatisfied with the forms of government which they have

inherited from the past) now hent on experiments for making their own control more direct and effective. Since democracy, though assumed to he the only rightful kind of government, has, in its representative form, failed to fulfil the hop are ago, new remedies are sought to

cure the defects experience has revealed.

These are among t] our time which suggest that

a comprehensive survey of popular governments as a whole may now have a value for practical politicians as well as an interest for scientific students. Any such survey must needs be imperfect, — indeed at best provisional — for the data are too vast to be collected, digested, and explained by any one man, or even by a group of men working on the same lines. Yet a sort of voyage of discovery among the materials most easily available, may serve to indicate the chief problems to be solved. It is on such a voyage that I ask the reader to accompany me in this book. Its aim is to present a general view of the phenomena hitherto observed in governments of a popular type, showing what are the principal forms that type has taken, the tendencies each form has developed, the progress achieved in creating institutional machinery, and, above all — for this is the ultimate test of excellence — what democracy has accomplished or failed to accomplish, as compared with other kinds of government, for the well-being of each people. Two methods of handling the subject present themselves. One, that which most of my predecessors in this field have adopted, is to describe in a systematic way the features of democratic government in general, using the facts of particular democracies only by way of illustrating the general principle- expounded. This method, scientifically irreproachable, rang the risk of becoming dry or even dull, for the reader remains in the region of bloodless abstractions. The other method, commended by the examples of ^Montesquieu and Tooqneville, keeps him in closer touch with the actual concrete phenomena of human society, making it easier for him to follow reasonings and appreciate criticisms, because these are more closely associated in memory with the facts that BU them. These considerations have led me. instead of attempting t<> pn a systematic account of Democracy in it- general features and principles, to select for treatment various countries in which democracy exists, describing the institutions of in their theory and their practic to -how under what economic and social conditions each form works, and with what results for nood or evil. These conditions BO differentiate the working that no single democracy can he called typical. A certain number must be examined in order to determine what features they have in common. Only when this has been done can we distinguish that which in each of them is accidental from what Beems essential, characteristic of tin 1 nature and normal tendencies of democracy as a particular form of government.

Six countries have been selected for treatment: two old European State-, Prance and Switzerland; two newer States in the Western hemisphere, the American Union and Canada; and two in the Southern hemisphere, Australia and New Zealand. France has been the powerful protagonist of free government on the European Continent ami has pro foundly affected political thought, not only by her example but by a line of writers from the great names of Montesquieu and Eousseau down to Tooqneville, Taine, Boutmy, and others of our own time. In Switzerland there were seen the earliest beginnings of self-government among simple peasant

CHAP. I

INTRODUCTORY folk. The rural communities of the Alpine cantons, appearing in the thirteenth century like tiny flowers beside the rills of melting snow, have expanded by many additions into a Federal republic which is the unique example of a government both conservative and absolutely popular. Among the large democracies the United States is the oldest, and contains many small democracies in its vast body. Its Federal Constitution, the best constructed of all such instruments and that tested by the longest experience, has been a pattern which many ether republics have imitated. Canada, Australia, and Xew Zealand, whose institutions have

been modelled on those of England, are the youngest of tin 4

democracies, and the two latter of these have gone further

;iikI faster than any others in extending the sphere of State

action into new fields. To the comparatively full account

<>)' thee aix, I have prefixed ;i shorter treatment of two

other groups. The city republics of ancient Greece cannot he omitted from any general survey. Their brief hut brillianl life furnished the earliest examples of what men can

achieve in the taak of managing their affairs by popular assemblies and the literature which records and criticizes their efforts is one of the world'- most precious possessions, destined to retain its value so long as civilized society exists. The republics of what is called u Latin America," all of them Spanish except Portuguese-speaking Brazil and French-speaking Haiti, musl also find a place, for they have a double interest. Their earlier history shows the results of planting free representative institutions in a soil not fitted to receive the seed of liberty, while the progress which some few of them have been recently making towards settled order shows also that with an improvement in economic and intellectual conditions that seed may spring up and begin to flourish. Only one of the great modern democracies has been omitted. The United Kingdom, though in form a monarchy, has a government in some respects more democratic than is that of France, and the process by which it passed from an oligarchy to a democracy through four constitutional changes in 1832, 1868, 1885, and 1918 is full of instruction for the historian. But no citizen of Britain, and certainly no citizen who has himself taken a part in politics as a member, during forty years, of legislatures and cabinets, can expect

8 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pact i

to be credited with impartiality, however earnestly he may strive to be impartial. I have therefore been reluctantly obliged to leave this branch of the subject to some one, preferably some American or French scholar, who is not affected by a like disability.

These accounts of governments in the concrete constitute the centre and core of the book, and may, it is hoped, be serviceable to those who are interested in the practical rather than the theoretical aspects of politics. I have prefixed to them some introductory chapters analyzing the ideas or doctrines whereon popular government < rest) tracing the process by which they have grown, and indicating the conditions under which they are now worked; and have also called attention to certain generally operative factors which the reader must keep in sight while studying the features of the several communities examined. Such are die in-

fluences of education, of religion, of the new-paper press, of tradition, of party spirit and party organization, and of public opinion as a ruling force. These preliminary 6C form Part L, and Part IT. is occupied by the descriptions of the six actual modern democratic governments already enumerated. These descriptions d<> not enter into the details either of the constitutional mechanism or of the | ministrative organization of each country dealt with, but dwell upon those features only of its institution BO in

actual working, which belong to and illustrate their demo cratic character.

To these last-mentioned chapters which describe the working of actual democratic governments, past and present, there are subjoined, in Tart III., other chapters classifying and comparing the phenomena which the examination of these governments reveals, and setting forth the main conclusions to which they point.

The book thus consists of three parts. Part I. contains preliminary observations applicable to popular governments in general. Part II. describes certain selectee] popular ernments, giving an outline of their respective institutions and explaining how these institutions work in practice. Part III. summarizes and digests the facts set forth in Tart II. and indicates certain conclusions which may be drawn from them as to the merits and defects of democratic insti-

CHAP. I

INTRODUCTORY tutions in general, the changes through which these institutions have been passing, the new problems that are beginning to emerge, and the possibility of other changes in the future.

Unlike to one another as are many of the phenomena which the governments to be described present, we shall find in them resemblances sufficient to enable us to draw certain inferences true of democratic governments in general. These inferences will help ns to estimate the comparative merits of the various forms democracy has taken, and to approve some institutions as more likely than others to promote the common welfare.

There is a sense in which every conclusion reached regarding men in society may seem to be provisional, because though human nature has been always in many points the same, it has shown itself in other respects BO variable that we cannot be sure it may not change in some which we have been wont to deem permanent. But since that possibility will be equally true a century hence, it does not dissuade us from doing the best we now ean to reach conclusions sufficiently probable to make them applicable to existing problems. New as these problems seem, experience does more than speculation to help towards a solution.

Most of what has been written on democracy has been written with a bias, and much also with a view to some particular country assumed as typical, the facts there observed having been made the basis for conclusions favourable or unfavourable to popular governments in general. This remark does not apply to Aristotle, for he draws his conclusions from studying a large number of concrete instances, and though he passes judgment, he does so with cold detachment. Neither does it apply to Tocqueville who, while confining his study to one country, examines it in the temper of a philosopher and discriminates between phenomena peculiar to America, and those which he finds traceable to democratic sentiment or democratic institutions in general. The example of these illustrious forerunners prescribes to the modern student the method of enquiry he should apply. He must beware of assuming facts observed in the case of one or two or three popular governments to be present in others, must rid himself of all prejudices, must strive where he notes differences to discover their origin, and take no proposition to be generally true until he has traced it to a source common to all the cases examined, that source lying in the tendencies of human nature. But of this, and especially of the comparative method of study, something will be said in the chapter next following.

As the tendencies of human nature are the permanent basis of study which gives to the subject called Political Science whatever scientific quality it posa - 3, 80 the practical value of that science consists in tracing and determining the relation of these tendencies to the institutions which men have created for guiding their life in a community. Certain institutions have been found by experience T.> work better than others; i.e. they give more Bcope to (he wholesome tendencies, and curb the pernicious tendencies. Such institutions have also a retroactive actios upon those who live under them. Helping men to goodwill, self-restraint, intelligent co-operation, they form what we call a solid political character, temperate and law-abiding, preferring peaceful to violent means for the settlement of controversies. Where, on the other hand, institutions have been ill-constructed, or too frequently changed '<> exert this educative influence, men make under them little progress towards a steady and harmonious common life. To find the type of institutions best

calculated to help tin- In Her and repress tli.- pernicious tendencies is the task of the philosophic enquirer, who laya the foundations upon which the legislator builds. A people through which <rood sense and self-control are widely diffused is itself the best philosopher and the he-t legislator, as

is seen in the hist« >r\ of Rome and in that of England. It

was to the sound judgment and practical quality in these two peoples that the excellence of their respective cautions and systems of law was due. not that in either people wise men were exceptionally numerous, but that both were able to recognize wisdom when they saw it, and willingly followed the leaders who possessed it.

Taking politics (so far as it is a science) to be an experimental science, I have Bought to make this book a record of efforts made and resultfl achieved. But it so happens that at this very moment, there are everywhere calls for new departures in politics, the success or failure of which our chap, i INTRODUCTORY 11