Evening Post SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1938.

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 84, 9 April 1938, Page 8

Evening Post SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1938.

A DANGER TO DEMOCRACY J

For sheer, sententious simplicity Abraham Lincoln's definition of democracy—government of the people by the people for the people —can hardly be bettered. In the seventy and odd years since he said it, in his memorial oration, on the field of Gettysburg, Lincoln's faith in the survival of democracy has been fulfilled—with a qualification. It is true that it lias not "perished from tho earth," but forces have arisen recently with a design to compass that end. Everybody knows what dangers threaten democracy from without in the shape of hostile States, organised on a different basis, stealthily or openly encroaching in regions where at least the seeds of democracy had been planted, or virgin fields where the sowing was contemplated, but not begun. With such powers of evil against popular liberty democracy may yet have to deal, face to face, but in the meantime lhere is another danger, not external, but internal, which strikes at the very principles of "government by the people." This is the growth of bureaucracy in democratic communities. None of them is free from this "rule of the official." Lincoln's America has seen a phenomenal development of officialdom in the last few years. Huge new departmental offices rise in Washington to dwarf the Capitol and the White House, and new suburbs are created for the abode of new officials. The same phenomenon is visible in Britain, if to a lesser degree, while nearer home in New Zealand itself bureaucracy waxes apace out of all proportion to the size of the country and its population. What does it all mean? Can this expansion of administrative armies be reconciled with the definition of democracy as "government of the people by the people"? Writing a few years before Lincoln delivered his famous 'Gettysburg address concerning a tendency he noticed then, John Stuart Mill, in his essay "On Liberty," had much to say of its possible consequence. If, he said, the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the Government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration ; if' the employees of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the Government, and looked to the Government for every rise in life: not all the freedom of the Press and popular Constitution of the Legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name. Such may be said to be the position in Russia today except that there is no freedom of the Press. All the evidence is that Russia is ruled by a bureaucracy, relentless in the preservation of its own privileges and the suppression of attempts to oust it from its favoured position. Bureaucracy may or.may not make for an efficient State machine, but as R. H. 5,.. Crossman points out, it is in "complete contradiction to the spirit of democracy which leaves people to run their own lives as far as possible in the way they work out for themselves." Is it wise for the State to undertake everincreasing activities in the management of the people's affairs instead of leaving it to the people to do it themselves, either as individuals or through the voluntary associations of individuals? In the long run it is the character of the individual unit that makes a nation strong or weak as a whole. It has been well said that man is a social animal and only takes to politics when he has to. It is the fashion today to decry Samuel Smiles and his "Self-Help" as Victorian and out-of-date, but there is sound sense in his comment that "the value of legislation as an agent in human advancement has usually been much over-estimated." To constitute the millionth part of a Legislature, he says, by voting for one or two men once in three or five years, however conscientiously this duty may be performed, can exercise but little active influence upon any man's life and character. Nobody today would be prepared, with Smiles, to confine the function of government to the protection of life, liberty and property. Mill goes much further when lie says: A Government cannot have too much of the kind of activity which does not impede, but aids and stimulates, individual exertion and development. The mischief begins when, instead of calling forth the activity and powers of individuals and bodies, it substitutes its own activity for theirs; when, instead of informing and advising, and, upon occasion, denouncing, it makes them work in fetters, or bids them stand aside and does their work for them. The worth of a Slate, in the long run. Mill adds, is the worth of the individuals composing it. "A State which dwarfs its men in order thai they may be more docile instruments in its hands, even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and ihat the perfection of machinery, to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish." These words, with which Mill ends his essay, bear in them a prophetic truth. The very essence of democracy is, first, of all individual effort and individual liberty, and. second, voluntary association of individuals for community service.

In democracy at its best half the work is done by such voluntary associations and elected bodies giving gratuitous service in a thousand and one ways. If these were fostered and encouraged and, when or where necessary, guided by expert authority, Governments would find, by a delegation of duties, their burden of office much easier to bear. These arc the wellsprings of democracy, the sources of social experiment, from which Governments may gain fresh ideas and nations new life. Discouraged, they lend to dry up and with them a rich growth of flourishing institutions. Bureaucracy is proverbially barren in itself and its influence may blight the inspiration that takes its rise outside the realms of red tape. There is no need, if there were room, to quote examples. To the observant they are visible any clay. But it is worth while to consider whether education, for instance, would not be better for a little more freedom in the hands of local bodies with greater powers of initiative, or whether voluntary associations of motorists could not, if suitably encouraged, exercise an influence over their members that would make for ampler . safety on the roads. The examples could be multiplied; the point is that in such voluntary and co-operative effort lies a neglected instrument for the successful working of democracy that Governments might use to advantage.