involved is not realised, and there is little desire to learn what has been tried or is being tried in Europe or elsewhere. Thus the average Australian is apt to welcome as an entirely new idea the theory of financing the State by the issue of a vast amount of paper money "secured on the great natural resources of the country" without knowing or caring anything of the history of the system of "assignats" by which the Revolutionary Government of France tried to raise money in the days of the French Revolution. So also when Communistic Socialism is recommended, few think of the fate of Lane's New Australia, the settlement in Paraguay. The Australian is proud to think that his legislation is the most advanced in the world, and he would be surprised to hear that he may learn something by studying the institution and laws of older countries. He does not pause to reflect that the race problems, industrial problems, and economic problems of Australia are essentially the same as similar problems in certain other countries, and that he can learn something by studying the legislative experiments of such countries. The fact is that the Australian is apt to look at a legislative proposal solely as it affects himself, and unless its beneficial results are likely to make themselves felt early or at least in his lifetime it is not likely to receive his approval.

To such an attitude of mind the study of the Constitutions and history of the free City States of ancient Greece is a valuable corrective. The political and social conditions were undoubtedly very different from those of modern times, but the tendencies of human nature in those far-off times did not differ from the tendencies of human nature to-day. Man has gained in the course of over 2000 years a great number of material ameliorations of his lot, but he is no wiser or more moral or more capable of mental or physical achievements or more free from human frailties than he was in the days of the Athenian Republic. As the problems of good government were essentially the same, so were the motives and the temptations. The working of the various institutions of government and their effect on the people, the tendencies of democracies and their characteristics, are as discernable in the case of the democracies of ancient Greece, as with those we live in to-day.

125

DEMOCRACY AND STATESMANSHIP.

I

By

F. A. W. GISBORNE, Hobart, Tasmania.

N all human societies there is an unvarying tendency to regard the political conditions prevailing at any particular time as fixed and immutable. Gradual changes, like those of a physical kind produced by the operation of natural laws, pass unnoticed; only such political cataclysms as the sudden transition of ancient Rome from republican to despotic government, and, in recent times, the French and the Russian revolution attract general attention. For reasons that need not now be considered imperative, immobility long characterized ancient despotisms, such as those of Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, etc. Yet we know that political institutions in all modern civilized countries are in a state of continual movement, responding to the varying impulses of popular sentiment, and the necessities of the times. The magnitude

of the changes referred to can only be realized when we compare the present political condition of any country with its present condition, say, fifty years ago. Take the case of Great Britain. At the beginning of the present century the triple partnership in the sphere of government of King, Lords and Commons was in active operation. It is true, of course, that the House of Commons was then, and had long been, the predominant partner; but its decisions were inoperative unless ratified by the Sister Chamber and could always be negatived by the exercise of the Royal perogative. By the passage of the Parliament Act in 1910, however, the old constitutional equipoise was destroyed. The veto of the House of Lords is now merely suspensive, while that of the Sovereign, though not formally abolished, has fallen into complete desuetude. What is still ironically called the "Lower" Chamber has become supreme in Great Britain, and the complete fulfilment of the mournful prediction of the younger Pitt seems to be rapidly approaching. Within recent years a further change has been in progress. The chief authority in the State has tended more and more to become concentrated in a few hands, and the power of the British Cabinet has steadily increased. Both democracy and despotism favour centralised authority. Long ago that shrewd political philosopher, Hobbes, defined liberty as "power cut into fragments." Those fragments even in normal times, are subject to strong centripetal influences. In days of political convulsion the strength of those influences becomes overwhelming. The French Revolution gave birth successively to the National Assembly, the Committee of Public

Safety, the Directory and the Napoleonic Empire. The Russian Revolution has so far produced the Central Soviet, the Extraordinary Commission, and a supreme Council dominated by a triumvirate of able and unscrupulous men. The military dictator is likely soon to follow and restore the old autocracy in a more active and ruthless form. The particles of power dispersed abroad by the volcanic forces of revolution, by the operation of the law of political attraction invariably in the end, reassemble and coalesce to form the iron rod of despotism.

The people of Australia, fortunately, have so far escaped those social convulsions by which most of the older communities have periodically been torn asunder. This happy immunity may be ascribed partly to geographical isolation and racial homogeneity, partly to freedom from those intolerable hardships which the masses of the people have to bear in densely populated countries, partly to the absence so far of embittered class or religious feuds, and largely to inherent qualities of mind and character. Common sense and a spirit of fair-play. the characteristics of all British communities, are the most effective safeguards against civil strife. And there is necessarily less friction among a small number of people inhabiting a large country than among a large number inhabiting a small one. Where Nature offers abundance for all, the struggle to obtain possession of her gifts cannot reach a dangerous degree of intensity. But, as time goes on, all the advantages hitherto enjoyed by the people of the Commonwealth, save, we may hope, one alone, will gradually weaken and disappear. Class rivalries and jealousies will develop with the growth of population and the intensifying of the struggle for existence. The menace of foreign attack will strengthen with the expansion of the power of the Asiatic nations and the annihilation of distance by the development of aeronautics. And it may well be that in the circumstances which will exist before the close of the present century the political institutions which Australia has found fairly satisfactory in her early youth will, if not essentially modified, prove the source of weakness, discord and peril. Of the abstract merits of different forms of government it were futile to argue. It is a mere truism that, in practice, political institutions suited to a nation that has attained a high degree of civilization would be entirely unsuited to another whose condition was less advanced. National psychology in the main determines the form of national government, and changes to be beneficial, must come from within not without. Many observers regard with some trepidation the political experiments now being attempted in such countries as India, China and

Egypt, where already the effects of pouring new wine into old bottles are proving disruptive. After all, seeing that the perfect government connotes the perfect society, perfection in theory where the condition essential to success is absent, may lead to unfortunate results in practice. Statecraft is not an exact science. It is essentially practical. The control of the affairs of mankind could not safely be entrusted either to idealists or professors of mathematics.

Each of the three recognised forms of government, monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, has certain salient characteristics. Blackstone, in the introduction to his famous Commentaries attributed to the first that of strength, to the second that of wisdom, and to the third that of honesty of purpose. Like all generalisations the saying is open to criticism, inasmuch as, under a weak monarch, such as Honorius or Henry VI, a country either falls into a state of Anarchy, or becomes the victim of some resolute foreign enemy, while in times of revolutionary excitement the democratic government puts forth the super-human, though usually transient, energy of madness. And aristocracy, using the term in its customary debased and incorrect sense as implying government by a privileged class may, as has again and again been proved in history, be both weak and foolish. The British Constitution as it existed during the early portion of the last century combined, perhaps, in the highest degree yet attained in modern times, the three great essentials of good government, strength, wisdom and virtue.

Supporters of representative institutions may be divided into two classes corresponding roughly to the optimates and populares of Cicero's time. Those belonging to the one regard the franchise as a privilege. Those belonging to the other consider it a right. The former hold that citizens should be raised to the franchise; the latter favour the lowering of the franchise to the great mass of citizens. The one school emphasizes the right of every citizen to good government, and contends, not unreasonably, that good government is impossible unless the functions of legislation and administration be confined only to honest and capable hands. The other, ignoring the vital question as to whether real merit, or hypocrisy, or plausible incompetence is most likely to win the favour of uninformed electors, insists that, with negligible exceptions, every adult citizen possesses an inherent and equal right to assist, directly or indirectly, in making the laws which he is required to obey. Thinkers of the one class place the common weal above the common will, while the views of their opponents were fairly expressed by a late Prime Minister of Great Britain,

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, when he roundly asserted that good government was no substitute for government by the people. The attitude of the champion of the one school is governed mainly by intellectual and practical, that of the other by moral and theoretical considerations; and while the former rely on history and the recognized disparities and the limitations of human mind and character to justify their views, the latter profess profound faith in popular instincts, and appeal to general principles of equality and justice.

It is an extraordinary fact, and one which shows the overwhelming force of human vanity, that a form of government which has never received the unqualified commendation of a single political thinker of eminence is now commonly regarded as quite superior to criticism. Ephemeral administrators supported by ephemeral Parliamentary majorities elected in an atmosphere of turbulence and misrepresentation by huge masses of politically ignorant electors, are complacently recognized as the fitting instruments to give effect to what is commonly called the national will. We do not, certainly, choose our legislators in the rather crude fashion adopted by the citizens of an ancient Greek State, where from time to time the candidates for positions of authority were required to pass in succession, accompanied by their supporters, closed chambers in which certain appointed judges were concealed, and those in whose favour it was considered the loudest uproar was raised were declared elected. The vox populi now operates in a less noisy and disturbing fashion, and we have substituted election by votes for election by clamour. Yet can we affirm with confidence that the ballot ensures the supremacy of brain power over lung power? And if we accept as true the quaint saying of Plutarch contained among Bacon's Apophthegms: "It is otherwise in a commonwealth of men than of bees; the hive of a city or kingdom is in best condition when there is least of noise or buzz in it," a system under which communities are agitated at short intervals by the disturbances known as general elections, in order, not infrequently, that bad legislators may be replaced by worse, has little claim to the respect either of the political philosopher or the average intelligent citizen.

While representative government based on universal suffrage, and subject to none but the most derisory safeguards, has always been the object of censure and ridicule among notable political thinkers, its defenders have mainly been confined to members of the particular class unquestionably benefited by it. Popular politicians are unanimous in acclaiming what they usually call popular institutions. Their attitude is quite natural, but it can hardly be said to be dictated by