DEMOCRACY AND EMPIRE.* IN this book Professor Hearnshaw has reproduced

some lectures which he delivered before the Royal Colonial Institute and elsewhere. They are a deeply interesting study of the problems which a democracy has to face when it is governing distant countries and backward peoples, and, moreover, settling its relations with Colonies ruled by white men of character and ability who must eventually pass through the Colonial stage and demand the position of sister-States with the Mother Country. There is always a tendency for a prosperous democracy to think that methods which have worked well in its own case are applicable to all people. If a democracy withholds the right of self-government from its dependencies, it is too easily accused of being an oppressor ; yet there would be no shorter cut to misery for some dependencies than to be allowed to govern themselves. It is an ancient problem this of a democracy in the course of evolution trying to play the part which in earlier days was played—narrowly yet triumphantly so far as the maintenance of such a thing as the Pax Romana went—by an autocracy. Cleon said that a democracy oould not manage an empire, and one is bound to admit that a great many democracies have failed. Professor Hearnshaw is, nevertheless, full of confidence for our own Imperial future, although, of course, the British problem is by no means yet solved. The main point of his lectures is to show why other democracies did fail, and in what respects the British Democracy is different, and why it will therefore probably succeed. He shows a sureness of touch and a lucidity of expression which ought to commend the lectures to a large number of readers.

When Cleon said that a democracy could not manage an empire he was thinking of his own Athenian democracy, and he was justified. The Athenians had no consistency or con- tinuity in their conduct of affairs. Cleon saw that however harmless continual oscillations might be in a city-State, they must speedily be fatal in the government of dependencies. Within a quarter of a century of the utterance of his dictum the Athenian Empire had vanished, and even Athens herself had come under the heel of Sparta. So again with Rome ; as she extended her possessions she became less democratic. Her popular institutions let their powers pass into the hands of senators, bureaucrats, and soldiers. Finally, all the authority became concentrated in an omnipotent Caesar. So the story goes on through mediaeval times, and in comparatively modem times we behold the Austrian Empire conceived by Metternich as the exact negation of democracy. Bismarck designed the

• Democracy and the British Empire. By Jr. J. 0. Hearnshaw. M.A., LL.D. London : Constable. 17s. 6d. net.l

German Empire as a huge simulacrum of democracy, but the Reichstag hardly disguised the power of the autocratic bureaucracy behind it.

After examining the basis on which the loosely-knit British Empire is built, Professor Hearnshaw says :— " It will thus be seen that in English history the term empire ' is. in brief form a declaration of independenoe. It proclaims freeslom from foreign jurisdiction, and not a claim to exercise jurisdiction over foreigners. It is the assertion of insular autonomy, and not a pretension to world-dominion. It was used in respect of England herself, and it had no sort of reference to overseas territories. It was a. synonym of liberty and self - determination, not of conquest and subjugation. Hence, far- from the terms ' democracy ' and empire ' in their original senses being incompatible with one another, they express but two aspects of the same idea. Democracy' means government of the people, by the people, and• for the people ; empire,' as the tenth-century Edgar and the sixteenth-century Henry used it, does little more than describe a state exempt from outside interference. The one connotes internal autonomy, the other external sovereignty ; the terms are complementary, not contradictory."

That, surely, is a very good definition of the differences between the British Democracy and the other democracies which have tried to maintain empires. Other empires were deliberately

constructed by Governments, but the British Empire was constructed by private pioneers and traders who built much better than they knew, producing in the stride of business, or, as it were, sometimes in a fit of absence of mind, results which all the political philosophy of past ages had failed to achieve.

It was not until Chatham discovered that the necessity of war compelled• him to think about the organization of the Empire that British statesmen became seriously conscious that such a thing as the Empire existed. Chatham was our first great Imperialist. His Imperialistic policy might have suffered no check if it had not been for the American War of Inde- pendence. So many Englishmen sympathized with the American Colonists and resented the policy of George ILL and of his obstinate Minister, Lord North, that a large part of the British people began to think of Colonies as necessarily objects of exploitation,. Many others who did not regard them in that light at all events looked upon them as a nuisance. Even,

under Disraeli such thoughts were not always absent from the- minds of Conservative statesmen. But just because the British

Empire had been produced by the instincts of the people, and not by the cut-and-dried plans of Governments, it went on of its own momentum whatever might be said about it in current political thought. It prospered for the same reason that Constitutional -government triumphed over autocracy in Stuart England—because its champions had been through a long and hard schooling in managing their own affairs. Eighteenth- century France, nineteenth-century Germany, and twentieth- century Russia all called to the conduct of high politics people who had never been through such a rough discipline of self- dependence.

We must pass over Professor Hearnshaw's comparison of the British and American Constitutions, and also his analysis of the nature of democracy in the. British Dominions—a democracy which often seems to be but is not really Socialistic. Iroidentally, we regret very much that Professor. Heamshaw condemns the Referendum. We cannot ourselves see why the representative functions of Members of Parliament should be in the least injured by asking the electors, after a Bill has been passed through all its stages, to answer by a " Yes" or " No "

the simple question whether they want the Bill to come into force.. On the contrary, we feel sure that the Referendum-

would increase the prestige of Parliament by giving the electorate a closer interest in its deliberations.

Finally, Professor Hearnshaw writes with real indignation about the Council of Action, because he recognizes that the work of a body which, while representing only a section,

arrogates to itself the right to dictate to the Government,. is an absolute violation of the democratic principle which has guided us throughout our history. He blames the Govern-

ment, and we heartily agree with him,, for never having properly faced the question. In our opinion it was the duty of. Parliament, immediately the Council of Action was formed and

tried to dictate a foreign policy, to pass a resolution affirming that such a proceeding could not be tolerated in a country where the Government rests on the will of the majority. Pro- fessor Heamshaw calls the issue raised by the Council of Action the " supreme question of the day." His- doctrine is so- sound that we must quote a passage which surely could not have been - better expressed :—

" But even if all the accusations levelled against constitutional government were well established, it would still be the duty of every lover of his country and every friend of humanity to devote his whole energy to the reform of representative institutions and to resist to his last breath all attempts, however attractive and insidious, to substitute force for argument and to revert to the primitive method of breaking heads in lieu of the civilized method of counting them. Even if it be true that the House of Commons sent up, say, at the last General Election, obtained its mandate by fraud and corruption, cajolery and lies, the proper remedy is to expose its evil praetiees, to educate and inflame the electorate, and to prepare for it a well-merited debdele when next it presents itself at the polls. If the electoral system is one that gives an advantage to chicanery, it is within the power of the enfranchised democracy to alter it. In the United Kingdom and in the dominions the people is in absolute control. It can do what it likes. The process of the education and infliunmation of the people may, of course, be a long one, and meantime much wrong may be done. But the life of the nation is still longer, and it is infinitely better that much wrong should be done by constitutional means than that it should be prevented by the " direct action " of an enlightened minority. For the method of 'democratic• administration is the rule of the majority. No one pretends that the majority is infallible. On the contrary, it is freely admitted that the majority is liable to make all sorts of mistakes and to commit all kinds of injustices. It is even admitted that its errors and its faults may be so grave as to warrant a resistance and a rebellion-that results in its overthrow. But let there be no illusions respecting that contingency. The overthrow of the rule of the majority means reversion to •borne form of minority rule, and the consequent reduction of the majority to the political condition of the proletariat of the days before the passing of the Reform Acts."