LOSS OF FAITH

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 145, 16 March 1931, Page 8

LOSS OF FAITH

Democracy a Failure? CANON JAMES’S ADDRESS Parliament and the People “Thirty or forty years ago It required a sturdy courage to suggest that democracy was anything but an unqualified success, the pinnacle of political evolution. Now it has become almost a commonplace to say that democracy has failed,” declared Canon Percival James in his sermon last evening at St. Paul's ProCathedraL “I pleaded some weeks ago that a moral appeal should be made by our leaders; but I find many who consider it quite useless to address higher appeals to the mass of voters. The only argument, they say, that has any value for gaining votes is that ‘This will pay you best; this policy is designed to put most into your pockets and to take least out of them.’ “The average voter has been debauched by the methods of wholesale bribery that have long been practised by politicians of all parties in all democratic countries. Parties have found that they can most easily climb into power upon pledges of doles to large sections of the electorate from the plunder of minorities. “If this is the necessary effect of . democratic institutions, based unon universal suffrage, then politics must become more and more degraded, honourable men driven out of what should be a noble calling, and the destinies of peoples committed into the hands of unscrupulous demagogues. There are some countries in which political life is so shameful that to call a man a politician is to offer him an insult™ Political Insanity. “Something like this, if we may judge by utterances which reach us from Australia, is the opinion now forming itself in the minds of thoughtful men there. The marvel of Australia is the combination of a generally high level of intelligence among the people, with a political insanity which has inflicted upon Australia a national humiliation, felt keenly by the decent elements there. The politicians’ pledges of predatory legislation have been redeemed to the point of the destruction of national credit; and it seems a small thing to some of the politicians to complete the disaster by the sacrifice of national honour. Can we wonder that reasonable men in Australia, who have some conception of the conditions of national prosperity, are fearing that a continuance of democratic institutions, at least in tire shape that they have "hitherto been known, must inevitably lead to national suicide? ... “That democracy has failed is not the peculiar opinion of that school of political thought which calls itself conservative, and is called by its opponents ‘reactionary.’ On the contrary, the revolt against democracy is led by the more radical movements.' which treat it with open scorn, ns in Russia. The more fervently men pin their faith to any remedy of our social ills, the more firmly they are convinced that that remedy is dependent upon strong, sane, just and wise government, which has been shown to be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain under democracy. Failure Under Test. “These things are being written and said. lam not giving my own opinions. Present forms of government it seems to me must continue for a time, if only because there is no alternative likely to be accepted. But all this is melancholy hearing to us. We used to be told that ‘Parliamentary institutions have been incomparably the greatest gift of English people to the civilisation of the world.’ It is sad to find that bo many have lost all faith in the political institutions they have borrowed from ourselves The truth seems to be that the mind and character of the average citizen have not been found equal to the exacting danands which a system of universal suffrage makes upon him. He is not a clear enough thinker to share the responsibilities of government. Nor has he the qualities of character that can put the good of the country before selfish interest, much less put the cause of humanity before the claims of his own nation. “The question whether 'democracy as we know it can be mended or must be ended’ depends upon the possibility of convincing the average elector that the moral factor in political and economic questions must be dominant. If his civic conscience is informed, controlled and directed by high ethical ideals and motives, good government must follow. The church in its corporate capacity must keep clear of party politics; but the church must never cense to impress upon the Christian that he must think as a Christian, and vote as a Christian. The political function of the church is to seek to Christianise the political and economic motives of citizens; to wean them from worship of the golden calf to obedience to the golden rule; to proclaim that ‘righteousness exalteth a nation,’ and is more important than the development of material resources; and that the national standard of honour is more sacred than the national ‘standard of living.’ ”