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Reviews of Books SIR HENRY MAINE ON POPULAR GOVERN M EN T Popuhr G ovemmgovermg‘eliitwz t. F
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Th aim“); P ts of Polpular emocracy, he Age of Progress, The Constitution of the United States. By Sir Hen Maine. Po u lar ed. John Murray, London. p. 254 + in ex 17. (2:. 611. Mi.)
THESE four
essays,
though published
a generation ago in the Quarterly Review in their original form, and issued as a book in 1885, are not the best known and most read in the United States of Sir Henry Maine's productions. The publisher has now issued the first popular edition, and as time goes on the American demand for a work which must always possess interest for thoughtful readers will doubtless increase. On account of its broad generalizations based on a wide survey of historical facts, its timeliness is quite as
great now as in 1885; some observations, such as those regarding the British Constitu tion, are in fact even more significant with reference to current events than to conditions of yesterday. The writings of Sir Henry Maine have taken their place with the world's great literature, so it is idle to praise their analytical acumen, rich learning, and striking literary beauty, and equally needless to dwell upon the desul tory and inexact method sometimes pur sued. It is proper, however, to discuss the substance of his main contentions within the restricted space available. “Popular government," the term which he adopts after some deliberation as best suited to his ends, is somewhat vague in its applica tion. Sir Henry Maine himself perceives that there are many forms of government by the many. He evidently does not consider, however, the diversity of form so great as to weaken the opportunity for formulating generalizations applicable to all government by the many. But the Many and hoi polloi, as the words are currently used, are not ex actly synonymous. Popular government doubtless includes government by the mob, but does include something more. Monarchy and oligarchy have both passed away in most western countries. Monarchical and aristo cratic forms still largely survive, but in some countries nominally governed by a king, the people are intrusted with large powers of
legislation, and even, to a large extent, with that to alter the Constitution itself. More over, where the people do not in fact govern, the power to govern is often in western civili zation conferred upon them both by the law and by the sanctions of public opinion. Con sequently popular government is not to be treated as an abnormal phenomenon. On the contrary, there is a species of popular government which. by carrying out policies springing from partisan exploitation of the class interests of the proletariat, is bound sooner or later to disrupt the natural organi zation of society, and may result in conditions such as those to be seen in the French Revo lution, and in the political vicissitudes of some
of the less stable governments of Latin America and Latin Europe. Toward this extreme democracy it may seem that the more conservative countries, under the stress
of Radical propagandism, are trending, but such an impression is largely if not wholly superficial. While Radicalism is often ram pant it is but seldom, and then usually only temporarily, triumphant. Moreover, it is ut terly inconceivable that countries like Great Britain and the United States shouldever come to be, once for all, popular governments in the sense of being governed by the mob. It is thus evident that government by the Many presents two distinct varieties: one in which the balance of power is in the hands of a minority too large and toov popularly consti tuted to answer to the name of an aristocracy, or of a conservative majority which upholds the moral interests common to society rather
than those of a special class; the other, in which the balance of power has passed to a radical majority not sensitive to broad ethical considerations, and bent on wiping out every inequality of political and social, and some times even of economic status. The former answers to the description, probably, of what is meant in our Constitution by the words “a republican form of government"; the latter is Radical Democracy-—a thing, fortunately, which exists rather in the oratory of dema gogues and imagination of socialists than, to any considerable extent, with any substantial permanence, in the actual world.
It is of Radical Democracy that Sir Henry Maine is writing when he says (p. 35): "Secu
