CHAUTAUQUA

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 125, 19 February 1921, Page 9

CHAUTAUQUA

THE SECOND PROGRAMME. The musical portion of the second Chautauqua, programme, presented in the Fairmers’ Institute .Ball last evening, was provided by Mr. Lowell Patton, pianist, and Miss Lula Root, contralto. These performers gave a wide variety of items, and established thoroughly good relations with their audience. Miss Root’s Indian songs, in appropriate cos? tume, were among the attractive features. Mr. Patton showed himself a capable and versatile pianist. A lecture entitled "The Unfolding of Democracy,” by Mr. Joel W. Eastman, occupied the second part of the programme. Mr. Eastman treated democracy as the product of spiritual and intellectual -relations peculiar to cerI tain races. Democratic government 1 meant government by public opinion, ■ animated by a desire for the common . good. It best expressed itself through I the Cabinet system as it had evolved 1 itself in the British Empire. Ho did i not believe that a- nation could be I governed successfully by the direct reference of vital questions’ to the people, | since the people could not sit back 1 quietly and think out the problems put before them. They would be swayed by prejudices, passions, and demagogues, and work done under thoso influences had to be done over again later. He believed in representative government, because it compelled people to wait and think, instead of recording in legislation a series of impulses and explosions. A legislature should not be composed of men tied and caged by the holders of certain particular opinions; it should consist of ths people’s chosen men, sent to Parliament to study the problems of the hour and do the best they could for their fellow men. If a nation did not send its best men to Parliament, the people ought' not to blame the parliamentary they should blame their own faulty conception of the status of public service. Democracy was tho product of tho ever unfolding mind of man, the normal expression of the creative instinct of the race. The hope of the future as of the past was based on democracy, in the form of responsible representative government. The sole guarantee of tho liberty of tho individual was the maintenance of the democratic institutions that generations of liberty-loving men had built. Mr. Eastman proceeded to trace the relation of democracy to industrial problems. Tho men, who held industrial power and the men' who aspired to hold that power, he eaid, were threatening to wreck civilisation in their conflict. The salvation of civilisation and of the world must bo sought in the application of defuocracy to industry, in tho opening of doors to the creative instincts of men, and in tho development of the spirit of service that was to be found in tho heart of man. Tho lecturer spoke with warm appreciation of the political institutions ami traditions of the British Empire.