THE NEW DEMOCRACY.
The New Democracy : a Political Study. By W. Jethro Brown, M.A., LL.D. (Macmillan and Co. 7s. 6d.)—The author of this thoughtful work is a professor in the University of Tasmania, and he seems to be primarily addressing the people of Australia, though he draws facts and arguments from the United States, England, and France. He is mainly impressed by the immense problems which lie before us as compared with the slender political preparations that have been made for meeting these problems. In an especial degree he thinks that up to the present representative government has not proved much of a success, in which opinion he is more at one perhaps with American than with English experience. His object is, therefore, to find some remedy for the shortcomings of the representative assembly. Two such remedies suggest themselves—the Refer- endum and Proportional Representation. Professor Brown rejects the former and accepts the latter, wherein he departs from American opinion, for all those who in America accept one accept both. Moreover, we do not think that Professor Brown has quite done justice to the Referendum as developed in Switzerland. Proportional Representation is an ideal which we may perhaps reach one day, but at present it could not be worked in England, and we should have supposed that it was not easy of adoption in Australia. It always seems to us that most of our political reformers rely too much on mere changes in machinery, and we trace that too confident belief in machinery in this volume. The author, approaching the question of Australian Federation, considers the undoubted difficulty of adjusting demo- cratic institutions to large States, but he considers the large State as having been rendered inevitable by modern discoveries, and therefore concludes that the adjustment must somehow be made. The book is a very useful and suggestive contribution to modern political science, and is written in a calla and compre- hensive spirit.
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