IMPORTANT ARTICLES IN CURRENT MAGAZINES "Liberty and Democracy." International Journal of Ethics OCT 1 1935 The National Association for Constitutional Government was formed for the purpose of preserving the representative institutions established by the founders of the Republic and of maintaining the guarantees embodied in the Constitution of the United States. The specific objects of the Association are: 1. To oppose the tendency towards class legislation, the unnecessary extension of public functions, the costly and dangerous multiplication of public offices, the exploitation of private wealth by political agencies, and its distribution for class or sectional advantage. 2. To condemn the oppression of business enterprise,—the vitalizing energy without which national prosperity is impossible; the introduction into our legal system of ideas which past experience has tested and repudiated, such as the Initiative, the Compulsory Referendum, and the Recall, in place of the constitutional system; the frequent and radical alteration of the fundamental law, especially by mere majorities; and schemes of governmental change in general subversive of our republican form of political organization. 3. To assist in the dissemination of knowledge regarding theories of government and their practical effects; in extending a comprehension of the distinctive principles upon which our political institutions are founded; and in creating a higher type of American patriotism through loyalty to those principles. 4. To study the defects in the administration of law and the means by which social justice and efficiency may be more promptly and certainly realized in harmony with the distinctive principles upon which our government is based. 5. To preserve the integrity and authority of our courts; respect for and obedience to the law, as the only security for life, liberty, and property; and above all, the permanence of the principle that this Republic is "a government of laws and not of men." Representative Government By David Jayne Hill1 Wherever in the world absolute government, in the form of despotism, has been abolished, it has been through the influence of representative government in some form, good or bad, perfect or imperfect. There is now, at this time, no country in the world which claims to have a constitution, which does not claim to have some kind of representative government. Most of the criticisms that have been passed upon it are based upon its failure to produce the results that were expected of it, but whenever they are examined in detail, in each case, I think it can be found to have failed either, first, because of the absence of some corrective device to give stability to popular representative government, as in the case of France, or in its being treated as a practically inoperative system, a sort of concession to public opinion, as in Germany, or in its being considered as a sort of automatic mechanism which can start itself and stop itself at the right time without much human supervision, as in the United States. In France, for example, it controls the whole government with such completeness, and so promptly expresses the mobile state of public opinion-and in normal times when the Gallic nature is not under the stress and strain of a great public calamity as at the present time, French sentiment is very mobile -that a few votes in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies may completely change the whole government several times in the same month. The President being practically without power and the ministry depending upon the support of the Assembly, there is repeatedly, for short periods, no government at all in France, and were it not for the tenacity of routine traditions in the administrative offices and the sound practical practical judgment of the French judges, the Republic, which, properly speaking, has no constitution, but rests upon a few organic laws, would be plunged into the utmost confusion. But it may be said that with all this mobility of feeling in France, which acts so suddenly and destroys the government so quickly, there is in the Gallic mind, a logical quality, a devotion to great ideas represented in the courts of France, that give it a great steadying quality. In the German Empire, the exactly opposite condition prevails. There every good and perfect gift is believed to come down from above. The Reichstag, though elected by universal suffrage and secret ballot, is in effect little more than a debating society, with power to obstruct new legislation, but obliged to submit all its own proposals to the Bundesrath, a non-elective body representing the sovereigns, before it can act upon them. This is just what Bismarck, who hated parliamentary government, intended it to be. Now, in the Netherlands, that wonderful little monarchy, with various strictly republican traditions, the peo 'From an address delivered before the Lawyers' Club of New York, January 13, 1917, and here reprinted by permission of the author. |