party their politics. They are used sparingly, they generally deal with questions in which all voters take a genuine and intelligent interest, and are decidedly popular institutions. It may seem strange to learn (1, 448) that they have reduced rather than intensified party feeling. But to realise what they may mean when transplanted to another continent, and worked recklessly by a selfish party machine, or even by an alliance of cranks, we have to turn to the American section, and to read the history of the Referendum and the Initiative in the state of Oregon and certain of its neighbours, seting f rec ure blic Ho rect all HOWS olitic r the ligio A 'where political associations, or interests that consider them- 'Se ople legi eople inest They he a Happy are the Swiss, who have no 'bosses,' no wealthy and corrupt party machine, very few cranks, and an admirable tradition of honest politics and of 'playing the game.' With them a political life is not in the pecuniary sense a profession; it is hardly even a career. There is no system of insincere polemics against party opponents; representatives do not inveigh against their colleagues, but take it for granted that they are acting according to their lights. There is an atmosphere of reciprocal respect, and the soundness of public life is secured by the existence of a vigilant and patriotic public opinion (1, 479). How far is this ideal, if prosaic, state of affairs the direct consequence of the fact that Switzerland is a th small country, where in cantonal politics every one knows every one else and his worth, and in national politics there is neither any bitter clash between classesfor there are no millionaires and few poor-nor between religions-sectarian bitterness is forgotten-nor even between sections and languages? Could Swiss cantonal methods possibly find a scope in the heterogeneous cosmopolitan population of New York? Or could the non-party Federal Executive, which works so well at Berne, manage the affairs of a great colonial empire, like that of France or Great Britain? It is extremely doubtful; in some respects we must conclude that the small state is the happiest, like the middle-class citizen of Phocylides. As to France, one may, as Lord Bryce shows, draw as depressing a picture as one pleases, and then find that one has misjudged a great people and its institutions. in 'Seven years ago observers thought they saw in France a people torn by internal dissensions, religious and political, a legislature changeful and discredited, a large part of the people indifferent to politics, only a small fraction of the finest intellect of the country taking part in its politics. They remembered the Panama scandals, the Affaire Dreyfus, the absurd political adventure of General Boulanger; they naturally concluded that France was a decadent country, which the flame of national life was flickering low. Then came a war more terrible than any known before. Political dissensions continued, political intrigues were as rife as ever: ministry followed ministry in quick succession. But the Nation rose to confront the peril that threatened its existence, and showed that the old spirit of France had lost nothing of its fervour, and her soldiers nothing of their Valour' (1, 368). One may find as many detestable details in French political life as one pleases. The group-system in the legislature, with its constant atmosphere of intrigue and and its ever-shifting ministers; the atmosphere of petty re jobbing in prefectures and committee-rooms; the ran corous intolerance in religious matters with the petty Samm spying and secret dossiers that it involved down to the ti outbreak of the war of 1914; the inequalties of the th droit administratif-these are things on which Lord den Bryce has had to expatiate, as in duty bound. Yet is mo the Republic responsible? po Isat 'Class-hatred, religious and anti-religious intolerance, deficient respect for personal liberty, ministerial jobbery, were not brought into France by democracy. They are maladies of long standing, heritages of the ancien régime, for which the Republic is responsible only so far as it has not succeeded in eliminating them. It is the misfortune, not the fault of the Republic that antagonisms are stronger than affinities' (1, 355). en ates OWD It yce Defi ativ And in the world crisis of 1914-18 public opinion proved s sound; the diseases were on the surface of the body; aw they did not affect the heart. COL Tar HOW am part gote shor deal Turning to the four English-speaking democracies co beyond the seas, we find much less similarity than plene might have been expected, considering that all four in their early years passed through the same mill of the old British colonial system. Allowance must, ad of course, be made for the fact that all Canadian problems are complicated by the existence of the great French-speaking minority in Quebec, and all the pro- ter blems of the United States by the fact that they have served for a century as a great melting-pot into which much queer alien metal has been cast. American optimists used to think that their country could absorb and digest any material-even African negroes. But the smelting has produced very doubtful amalgams, especially in the larger cities. Lord Bryce traces much of the more unsatisfactory features of American politics to the existence of vast uneducated blocks of foreignborn proletariate, the natural prey of the 'boss' and the 'machine.' But Australia and New Zealand have none of the problems of mixed blood; and in them alsoespecially in Australia-all is not well with the state, Der are Viror me opi opī de and the commentator finds much that disappoints him. Are the weak points the natural result of democracy, or of certain local conditions in each special case? Summing up in five lines what Lord Bryce has argued out in two volumes, we may conclude that, while many of the faults of modern democracies result from antecedent facts of origin, history, race, climate, geography, economics, for which a constitution cannot be held responsible, there remains a very large residuum of unsatisfactory phenomena for which democracy itself must take the blame. The conclusion is made certain when we find these faults pervading not only modern states but the free republics of antiquity, and noted down long ago by observers, like Plato and Aristotle, as essentially democratic failings. It is not, of course, the failings only for which Lord Bryce is in search. There are plenty of compensatory benefits on which he enlarges in his second volume. And some evils seem to be curing themselves; e.g. there is a well-marked and successful reaction against administrative corruption in America, which has brought many men of sterling character into politics, who would not or could not have entered them twenty years ago. splendid services of Australia to mankind during the late war have disproved the charge that her people were growing so interested in sport and strikes that they had no attention to spare for the greater issues of human life. No one will again declare her decadent, though they may still have to regret her want of interest in things intellectual, and the subservience of her administrations to the class-demands of a labour party whose policy some one summed up, as Lord Bryce notes (II, 258), in the simple claims, More wages for shorter hours; less work, and more amusement.' Canada's dealings with her race-problem give good evidence that her people by their intelligence and law-abiding habits are well prepared to face whatever problems the future may bring about, finding remedies for such defects as from time to time disclose themselves in her government. There is always good hope for the future when public opinion-real public opinion, not press opinion or party opinion-is sound. And in practically all of the states COL which Lord Bryce here analyses-putting aside parts of Latin America-it may be said that there is a public aga opinion and a sound one, though certain happenings of the moment may tempt the observer to doubt its Th existence or its soundness. Democracies have not lost tast the power of recognising and admiring virtue. They The have shown full power of discovering and respecting of a civic merit, even when embodied in a rather eccentric it th personality like that of Abraham Lincoln. They have I shown no tendency to overlook moral defects in their th leaders; no man scandalous in private life or in money gu matters can hope to maintain his leadership. The same st could not be said in any of the old monarchies or cho oligarchies of earlier centuries, which could tolerate et Walpole and Charles James Fox, Dubois and Talleyrand his in power. The establishment of popular freedom has boli removed, or at least diminished, many sources of fear or suffering which existed under more arbitrary forms of government. It is only in Latin America, which is not really democratic, and in Bolshevik Russia, which the is only a horrible and unreal parody of democracy, that hars administrative cruelty and deliberate personal perse raci cution of the enemies of the ruler of the moment can sol be discovered. C pre chi heir ng feto a If we ask what are the special drawbacks of democracy qua democracy, failings to be found regularly through all the ages, from the Athens of Plato and Aristophanes to Australia or the United States in the 20th century, there is no difficulty in constructing & het formidable list. Lord Bryce has done so in the seventysecond and seventy-eighth chapters of this book. or co N leadi man to ette nd Yet some of the usual indictments of democracy turn fin I out to be ill-founded when we cast an eye down the plai annals of history. For example, democracy has been accused of being the parent of class-strife. But classstrife was as bitter in the oligarchic republics of ancient Greece or medieval Italy as in any democratic state. That monarchies are not immune from it is evident when we recall the Jacquerie, Wat Tyler, the Hungarian peasant revolt of 1513, or the German peasant revolt of 1524. It is equally incorrect to accuse democracy of intolerance greater than that to be found in other mor to fifth par |