BOOKS.

THE THEORY OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION.* Tins study of modern conditions by a well-known American lawyer and publicist is of far greater interest than its title would seem to imply. There is comparatively little space given to the "theory." Mr. Adams's thesis is not new, and few will be found to controvert it :—

" A moment arrives when the minds of any given dominant type fail to meet the demands made upon them, and are super- seded by a younger type, which in turn is set aside by another still younger, until the limit of the administrative genius of that particular race has been reached. Then disintegration sets in, • The Theory of Social Resolution. By Brooks Adams. London: Macmillan and Co. [Cs. 6d. net.] the social momentum is gradually relaxed, and society sinks back to a level at which it can cohere."

This formula covers more or less exactly the various social revolutions of the past. To-day the movement is accelerated because of our scientific progress, changes in environment occur more rapidly, and the necessity for human adjustment is more urgent. Further, the modern mind is impatient with prolonged demands upon its attention, so that the chance of rational adaptation is precarious. Hitherto the English- speaking race has been faced with some kind of social con- vulsion about once in every three generations, when the envelope grew too tight for the growing organism beneath it. Nowadays the organism develops faster, and the envelope is even less automatically expansive, so we must be prepared for more freq neat upheavals.

That is the " theory " ; but the value of Mr. Adams's acute study lies in his analysis of one particular manifestation of the danger—the relation of capitalism in the United States, working under the shelter of a rigid Constitution, to the new stirring of the peoples. Mr. Adams has a wide acquaintance with history, more especially the history of laws and institu- tions, and he is a shrewd observer of the conditions of his own country. Moreover, he is the master of a style of singular epigrammatic charm and force. American conditions are not ours, but one part of the problem we share, and his con- clusions are of the profoundest interest to all students of political science.

Society to-day, he says, has been squeezed "from its rigid eighteenth-century legal shell, and has passed into a fourth dimension of space, where it performs its most important functions beyond the cognizance of the law, which remains in a space of but three dimensions." Sovereignty, whether in a monarchy or a republic, has always been based upon consent and mutual obligation; even an "absolute" monarch must realize this, or he will lose his crown or his head. An un- accountable Sovereign involves the status of slavery; but to-day in a democracy like the United States the capitalist has

acquired this type of sovereignty. For example, the owner- ship of highways has always been one of the powers of the Sovereign. To-day the chief highways are the railways, owned by private capitalists, who have used their sovereign power selfishly, as no legitimate Sovereign could have used it, and have resented any interference with their arbitrary claims as an interference with their constitutional rights. Further, a few bankers in New York virtually control the currency. and, with the currency, credit, and their use of this power is wholly beyond the reach of the law. Again, no free people has ever patiently endured trade monopolies which determine the price of the necessaries of life. The English and American Revolutions were largely due to the refusal of

nations to submit to monopolies not self-created. But to-day in America we see private monopolies flourishing, and, to set off the monopoly of capital, Labour Unions have organized

a monopoly of labour. The result is a widespread revolt, which must continue so long as capital exercises sovereign powers without accepting responsibility, as for a trust. If capital is obdurate, revolt can only be quelled by force—an impossible idea. Besides, revolt means disorder, and amid disorder capital and credit must perish. The only hope, in Mr. Adams's opinion, lies in a timely concession to the principle for which Mr. Roosevelt fought, the principle of

equality before the law :—

"A Government, to promise stability in the future, must apparently be so much more powerful than any private interest that all men will stand equally before its tribunals; and these tribunals must be flexible enough to reach those categories of activity which now lie beyond legal jurisdiction."

From this we pass to Mr. Adams's second thesis, that the American Courts are not impartial legal tribunals, but in their essence semi-political Chambers. The trouble began with the written Constitution. This Constitution, or fundamental law, is expounded by the Judges ; such a function is essentially political ; therefore, political pressure is bound to be applied to the Bench, for the simple reason that change is impossible unless the Courts are won over. The Judges have to interpret an abstract formula which is wholly inadequate to modern needs, and such interpretation must be largely a question of political opinion. In Britain an Act of Parliament can over- ride any law in existence; in America every Act has to be tried by the touchstone of an old formula, which can afford no

-real guidance; so the Courts are the real arbiters of politics, and in the circumstances they must decide, not by ordinary canons of legal interpretation, but by their political views :—

"The American Bench, because it deals with the most fiercely contested of political issues, has been an instrument necessary to political success. Consequently, political parties have striven to Control it, and therefore the Bench has always had an avowed Tartisan bias. This avowed political or social bias has, I infer, bred among the American people the conviction that justice is not administered indifferently to all men, wherefore the Bench is not respected with us as, for instance, it is in Great Britain, where law and politics are sundered."

:When we think of the great jurists who have adorned that Bench we are surprised at Mr. Adams's strictures; but a little reflection convinces us that he is right in his views as to the 'danger of the political duties laid by the Constitution on the Courts. The Federalists who made the Constitution believed that by a form of words they could constrain future genera-

tions to respect certain obligations. But you cannot constrain a people against their will, and a way must be found in a crisis to get round the Constitution. So the American Courts have been compelled to turn themselves into legislative bodies. In England in 1832 a certain kind of property- -votes in rotten boroughs—was confiscated without compensa- tion by Act of Parliament. In America it has been necessary at various times to confiscate without payment old and burdensome vested interests, but this could only be done by a kind of judicial legerdemain. The Courts invented the doctrine of the "police power," which allowed a public authority to do things not sanctioned by the Constitution. "They assumed a supreme function which can only be compared to the Dispensing Power claimed by the Stuarts, or to the authority which, according to the Council of Constance, inheres in the Church, to 'grant indulgences for reasonable causes." The "police power" represents whatever the Judges at the moment happen to think reasonable; that is to say, they perform the functions of legislators, not Judges. Instead

'of being a tribunal to lay down the law, they are "a jury that finds verdicts on the reasonableness of the votes of repre- 'sentative Assemblies, or, if it is preferred, an Upper Chamber which cannot originate, but can absolutely veto, all statutes touching on the use or protection of property." Now the worst of the Law Courts as legislative bodies is that they are bound to be behind the times—a good thing for ordinary litigation, but a bad thing in politics :—

- "The Court of King's Bench, when it held Hampden to be liable for the Ship money, draped the scaffold for Charles I. The Parliament of Paris, when it denounced Turgot's edict touching ,the corvee, threw wide the gates by which the aristocracy of France passed to the guillotine. The victory of the Superior Court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in the case of the Writs of Assistance, presaged the American Revolution ; and the Dred Scott decision was the prelude to the Civil War."

Once Judges become politicians they must take the con- sequences, and the next step will be the "recall "—a perfectly

logical result, but one which means the last degradation of a judiciary.

Mr. Adams fortifies bin argument by many examples from the history of the United States Courts in the past century, and by two brilliant chapters on the political tribunals of the French Revolution. With his main position, that the American Constitution interpreted by the Courts is not only

a dangerous bar to reasonable progress, but by implicating the Courts in politics lowers their reputation in the popular

mind, we think it difficult to disagree. His other contention, that unless Capital sets its house in order and submits to the law it will suffer a cataclysmic disaster, is no easier to refute. The capitalistic mind, he says, is highly specialized, and is very weak in those generalizing powers which are necessary for its safety. The great soldier is often a great statesman, but there is no instance of a great capitalist who has shown any genius for public affairs. He is irresponsible, and there- fore lawless; and, at the same time, of all human types he is the most defenceless. At present he leans on the Courts because of their political character, but they are the kind of reed which, if a man lean too hard on it, may run into his hand :—

"A political Court is not properly a Court at all, but an Administrative Board, whose function is to work the will of the dominant faction for the time being. Thus a political Court becomes the most formidable of all engines for the destruction of sUS creators tlo instant the social equilibrium Shift-1.7