HERBERT TUTTLE

The student of French history will recall three systems which have tried to deal with this admitted passion of the French people. The Bourbons crushed it; the Orleanists snubbed it; the Bonapartes deceived it.

Quite as serious an error [of the French] is the failure to provide for local self-government. As this lies at the bottom of republican institutions, and should be, moreover, the first concern of democracy

Imperialism is a false system for reasons which all but imperialists now accept.

In politics, as in every other department of life, the clashing of thought is sometimes a proof of disease, but always a promise of reform.

No other people learn so little by example as the French. With the United States before them as the model of democracy crystallized into an effective system, the French invariably drift into anarchy or coups d’état. Their republics have had too little or too much cohesion among the parts, or they have had no parts at all; the executive has been made a cipher or a despot. They have been destroyed by the incapacity of the builders, and their ignorance of the principle of checks and balances. To establish these requires mutual sacrifices, and often a high degree of political skill; but a people who are unwilling to make sacrifices, and who can produce no statesmen, are preordained to failure.

No error is more common than to confound democracy as an element in national character with democracy as a form of government.… Now the two are not only not identical, but they are not even necessarily coexistent. By the former we understand that spirit in a people which leads them to demand equality among citizens and a substantial control over their own affairs; by the latter, a system in which the people pronounce directly on all the details of government.

No one can deny that the Americans are more democratic than the English; yet the government of England feels more directly than that of the United States the force of public opinion. Each has its check on the action of the popular will. In the United States the check is found in narrowing and lengthening the channels by which that will reaches the governing powers; in England it consists of an hereditary crown and an hereditary nobility, which can restrain but cannot thwart the people.

America has shown how a free people can found a democracy shorn of all the terrors which for so many ages haunted the dreams of philosophers.

Quite as serious an error [of the French] is the failure to provide for local self-government. As this lies at the bottom of republican institutions, and should be, moreover, the first concern of democracy

No other people learn so little by example as the French. With the United States before them as the model of democracy crystallized into an effective system, the French invariably drift into anarchy or coups d’état. Their republics have had too little or too much cohesion among the parts, or they have had no parts at all; the executive has been made a cipher or a despot. They have been destroyed by the incapacity of the builders, and their ignorance of the principle of checks and balances. To establish these requires mutual sacrifices, and often a high degree of political skill; but a people who are unwilling to make sacrifices, and who can produce no statesmen, are preordained to failure.

America has shown how a free people can found a democracy shorn of all the terrors which for so many ages haunted the dreams of philosophers.

No one can deny that the Americans are more democratic than the English; yet the government of England feels more directly than that of the United States the force of public opinion. Each has its check on the action of the popular will. In the United States the check is found in narrowing and lengthening the channels by which that will reaches the governing powers; in England it consists of an hereditary crown and an hereditary nobility, which can restrain but cannot thwart the people.

No error is more common than to confound democracy as an element in national character with democracy as a form of government.… Now the two are not only not identical, but they are not even necessarily coexistent. By the former we understand that spirit in a people which leads them to demand equality among citizens and a substantial control over their own affairs; by the latter, a system in which the people pronounce directly on all the details of government.

The student of French history will recall three systems which have tried to deal with this admitted passion of the French people. The Bourbons crushed it; the Orleanists snubbed it; the Bonapartes deceived it.

Imperialism is a false system for reasons which all but imperialists now accept.

In politics, as in every other department of life, the clashing of thought is sometimes a proof of disease, but always a promise of reform.