THE NORTH SLESWIC QUESTION 329
bors, and as a class it may well be doubted whether they have any equals anywhere. Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of democracy and home-rule, their interest in politics is intense. In their local administrative councils they train themselves in parliamentarian functions, and enter the larger field of national politics skilled in debate and tactics. Of the members of the lower house {Folkething} of Parliament (Rigsdag) one-half are practical farmers, many of them men of marked ability. A plain farmer holds the portfolio of minister of agriculture in the pres- ent Liberal cabinet.
The constitution of 1849 guarantees free institutions, univer- sal suffrage, and equality for all before the law. Its original framers meant it to be one of the freest in Europe. Its spirit was, however, perverted and its intentions largely thwarted by the tenacious resistance of the conservative interests the landed proprietors and the bureaucracy that held the reins of power and for thirty years defied the will of an overwhelming majority of the people. No other nation, perhaps, would peaceably have submitted to a rule by such absurdly small a minority or to such flagrant violations of constitutional rights. The Danes, patient and persistent as they are, confined their warfare to parliamenta- rian maneuvers. An opportunistic alliance was formed against the common foe by the Left and Social Democratic parties. Every new election thinned the ranks of the reactionaries. Finally, in July of last year, when the number of Rightist repre- sentatives in the Folkething had dwindled down to 8 (out of a total of 114) of whom I (out of n) from the city of Copen- hagen, their old-time stronghold they had come to the end of their tether, and old King Christian bowed to the inevitable by appointing a cabinet of radicals sons of the people. The victory, late in arriving, was the more decisive and amounted in reality to a bloodless revolution. Under the firm pilotage of the present government the Danish ship of state has been suc- cessfully launched upon the sea of political progress, and the Danish people will henceforth take their place in the front rank of nations in which the problems of modern democracy are being worked out.
