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"The conventional model for explaining the uniqueness of American democracy is its division between executive, legislative, and judicial functions. It was the great contribution of Frank J. Goodnow to codify a less obvious, but no less profound element: the distinction between politics and policies, principles and operations. He showed how the United States went beyond a nation based on government by gentlemen and then one based on the spoils system brought about by the Jacksonian revolt against the Eastern Establishment, into a government that separated political officials from civil administrators. Goodnow contends that the civil service reformers persuasively argued that the separation of administration from politics, far from destroying the democratic links with the people, actually served to enhance democracy. While John Rohr, in his outstanding new introduction carefully notes loopholes in the theoretical scaffold of Goodnow's argument, he is also careful to express his appreciation of the pragmatic ground for this new sense of government as needing a partnership of the elected and the appointed. Goodnow was profoundly influenced by European currents, especially the Hegelian. As a result, the work aims at a political philosophy meant to move considerably beyond the purely pragmatic needs of government. For it was the relationships, the need for national unity in a country that was devised to account for and accommodate pluralism and diversity, that attracted Goodnow's legal background and normative impulses alike. That issues of legitimacy and power distribution were never entirely resolved by Goodnow does not alter the fact that this is perhaps the most important work, along with that of James Bryce, to emerge from this formative period to connect processes of governance with systems of democracy."--Provided by publisher.

One of the most noticeable phenomena in the world history of the last two or three hundred years is the subjugation of Asia by Europe. Asiatic civilization and institutions have in the shock of conflict with European civilization and European institutions either succumbed or have been made to suffer great modifications. In some instances political control has passed from Asiatic to European hands. In others, while Asiatic rulers have been able to maintain themselves in at least nominal control, their freedom of action has been curtailed by treaties forced from them by the fear of the loss of political independence.Furthermore, in those few cases of contact between the European and the Asiatic in which the latter has not suffered a serious loss of independence, European commercial and industrial organization has exercised a remarkable influence over Asiatic life. The steamship and the railway, both European inventions, have bound together the East and West in bonds so strong that it is futile to think that they will ever be broken, and have at the same time given to most Eastern countries means of transportation which are surely and with continuingly increasingly rapidity transforming the conditions of Eastern life.

The question of the constitutionality of government aid to the needy classes in the community may arise because of the existence of the rule which forbids the exercise of the power of taxation for any but a public purpose.The general principle that the purposes for which this power may be exercised must be public is perfectly clear, but the principle is to be applied in the light of our history. Thus from a very early time in the history of both England and this country the taxing power had been used to provide funds for the support of the poor. The poor laws, as they were called, have been regarded as constitutional notwithstanding the general rule of constitutional law to which allusion has been made.As new conditions have appeared to make necessary attempts on the part of the legislature to accord aid to various classes of individuals in the community, the courts have been called upon to determine whether such attempts are forbidden by the principle requiring that the purpose of the legislature shall have been public or whether they fairly come under the exception to the rule which has been shown always to have existed.