"CHAINED DOWN."

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1298, 29 November 1911, Page 9

"CHAINED DOWN."

A CANADIAN VIEW OF THE UNITED STATES. Tho following passages are taken from a rcmarkablo articlc which has appeared in the "Toronto World":— The United States is at its day of trial; a day of trial almost equal to that of tho Civil War. To our mind, the American system of government has failed. It has ended in a condition of affairs, try as hard as they will, where relief is almost impossible. What is this condition of affairs tlmt has been reached, and which practically has created the deadlock? It is tho attempt to govern a community, English in it-3 derivation, English still in its thinkings by an unchangeable written Constitution, by a limited Congress, and by limited representative institutions. The supreme merit and usefulness of tho English system as it prevails in Great Britain, and more or less ill the Empire, is that government is unlimited. It is true that Canada and Australia are, in a measure, limited by written Constitutions; but if they are, these can be changed without trouble. Tho United States Constitution is almost beyond change, and that is its trouble. In Great Britain any political, social, financial, or other problem of the State can be settled by a rote of the people in a general election, and then crystallised into an Act of Parliament. The most sweeping revolution in the British Constitution has been effected in our own day, and in. this very year, by cutting away the veto liower of the House of Lords, and this has been done with an agitation of less than five years, and, being done, prepares the way tor sweeping changes to follow; perhaps at the most after a discussion of two years; it may be a discussion of two weeks! In a word, tho British Parliament can do anything. The King and the Lords are limited as to their interference when the voice of the people is expressed. Parliament is free! The King can bo removed, the Lords can be still further cut down, a Republic could lie established, an oligarchy could be established. an emperor could be created-with tho widest power; in fact, anything imaginable almost, in- the way of an experiment of government, could be adopted in England. In the United States they are chained down, and we use the words in the widest sense, to a system imposed upon men now living by men who have been dead and under the ground for one hundred years or more. Make no mistake, mighty changes are soon at hand in the United States, and the people of to-day will, and must, find a way to govern themselves, and solve their own problems, without the overwhelming restraints of former generations, who were neither as wiso nor as competent, say what you will, as the people of. today. The Land of Liberty and the Sons of Freedom in chains to an obsolete system and to dead men is the great anachronism of our day! Wall Street is in a panic, or will lie in a panic in a very short time: Nobody at this moment has confidence in the United States. The European investor will not buy American securities; the British investor will lend Canada all the money she wants for any reasonable proposal; there is a lack of confidence in anything and everything American, no matter how food the' security may be and nobody distrusts tho situation so much •as the Americans themselves. Unfair concentration of capital, stock watering, and stock gambling—these three combined can ruin almost any nation. And the worst tiling of all is that the financial abuses which are so enormous and far-reaching are entrenched to-day in the Constitution. You must smash the Constitution to smash the abnses. _ Canada has one thing to do. and that is to keep clear of any rsolitical antanglement with the United StaKs umler these circumstances.—'"Toronto \vorld.