Suchergebnisse

1. The Heritance 2. The Psychologists: McDougall and Wallas 3. The Idealists: Jones and Watson 4. The Individualists: Cecil and Mallock 5. The Collectivists: The Webbs and MacDonald 6. The Pluralists: I. Laski and Russell 7. The Pluralists: II. Cole 8. The Communists: William Paul and E. and C. Paul 9. The Theory of Compromise: Hobhouse and Bryce 10. Internationalism: Norman Angell 11. The Governance of a Utopia 12. The State of Literature: I. The Drama 13. The State of Literature: II. The Novel 14. The Future; Notes; Bibliography; Index

The contemporary criticism in England of the traditional theory of the state can conveniently be traced to the famous introduction of Maitland to the fragment of Gierke. It is significant to note that Maitland's analysis followed by one year the classic restatement of the orthodox view by Bosanquet, thus perhaps offering another illustration of the common observation that when a doctrine has received its fullest elaboration, its decline has already set in. During the first twelve or fifteen years of the present century, this criticism became an important undercurrent of political thought, as shown by the emergence of Distributivism and Guild Socialism, the passing of the zenith of the conventional Fabianism with the publication in 1909 of the Minority Eeport on the Poor Law, and the publication of Figgis's Churches in the Modern State in 1913. This later view was as yet, however, only an undercurrent; for the main stream of thought as indicated by L. T. Hobhouse in his Liberalism (1911) did not show any effects of the new leaven. Only during the next decade, say between the publication of Russell's Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916) and Professor H. J. Laski's Grammar of Politics (1925), did the novel movement become the main current. Viewed in wider perspective, Russell, Hobhouse, the Webbs, Tawney, Cole, Laski, and Hobson offer variations on the same theme. The completeness and comprehensiveness of Professor Laski's Grammar of Politics make it especially significant. The book is, in fact, a summary of the development of English thought since 1900.

When the problem of second chambers is discussed, we frequently find that interest is confined to the subsidiary question of technique, omitting the prior question, "Why have a second chamber?" It is in the main assumed that second chambers are universally valid, and therefore attention is centered on the varied methods of selection and the extent of functions. If the primary question is raised at all, it is invariably answered by an appeal to experience. It is claimed that almost all modern governments have for a considerable time had bicameral legislatures, and that it is hazardous to disregard a practice that is so nearly universal. Seldom is an attempt made to go beyond experience and to analyze critically this admittedly wide practice. In fact, a bicameral legislature is generally held to be an unassailable and eternal verity, one of the few axioms of political science.Nevertheless, among the more systematic writers on political science the validity of the bicameral theory is far from unanimously supported. Even a hasty reference to the history of political ideas shows recurrent dissent. Thus, during the period of democratic ferment inaugurated by the French and American revolutions we find unmistakable opposition. To mention some examples, Samuel Adams, Paine, Turgot, Sieyès, and Condorcet were in favor of the unicameral form. The basis of their hostility is well summarized in the famous dilemma of Sieyès. Sieyès has indeed indicated the broad outlines of the objections; and a succeeding century of bicameral experience shows how difficult it is to escape from his vexatious alternatives. To reconcile faith in democracy with the assumption of the value of an effective check is assuredly not an enviable task. At any rate, for our present purpose suffice it to say that bicameralism has frequently been rejected.

The most significant political phenomena of post-war Britain are the emergence of the Labor party and the slow extinction of the Liberal party. The Labor party has emerged as the expression of a demand on the part of the wage-earners for an alteration of the basis of property. The Liberal party has suffered an eclipse because its historic mission has been achieved. The rising industrial classes which it represented for a century have now arrived. Whatever difference may still exist between the interests that were heretofore represented primarily by the Liberal party and those that were represented by the Tory party shrinks into insignificance as compared with the common interests of all the dominant elements against the radical demands of Labor. Thus Toryism and Labor alone will apparently share between them the future destinies of Britain. One will offer largely a brief for the claims of the past; the other will present in the main the demands of the future. The traditional British two-party alignment promises henceforth to be a struggle between Toryism and Labor, and to be marked by the intensity and animosity characteristic of a political division that comes dangerously near to being a clash of economic classes.