The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1919. DEMOCRACY IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE

New Zealand Tablet, 28 August 1919, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1919. DEMOCRACY IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE

—| ♦ whfjfiw H E epoch-making work of Jean Jacques SjJvjjP.'J Rousseau was, from many points of view, <*v !ll'4p a ver dangerous book. It is a work that •4gE=£*j we have been accustomed to hear denounced VJkf^fS l on account of its evil teaching and one .wnicn many, people are prepared to cuscuss without ever having read its pages. Jean ~;. . .;:.;.:. ,; s Jacques' book is a dangerous book and no mistake about.it, but at the same time it contains many : profound truths and large draughts of sane thinking which are less remembered, unfortunately than the more worthless and more pernicious parts of the Cmitrat Social. Jean Jacques was a dreamer, and

like every dreamer he got into : , cloudland and . away from realities when he dreamt of things of which he had no real knowledge: religion was one of these things. But the dreamer did .know some things, and one of these was his fellow-men. . .Therefore it is that we come upon such sound stuff concerning Democracy in the midst of a desert of nonsense concerning other things. The Control Social is proof positive that Rousseau. went deep to the heart of the tangled problem of government and saw the dangers and difficulties that surround it. He was no sciolist who followed a catch-cry like a will-o’-the-wisp: he knew the rough road and the perils that beset the traveller thereon, and he did . not conceal what he conceived to be the truth from his readers—.-fiery, thirsty democrats as they were in those days. In "one startling sentence Jean Jacques summed up the whole problem of government by the people :

S’il y avoit mi pevple de dieitx, il se gouverneroit democratiquement . Un gouvernement si parfait ne convient pas d des homines. In plain English: Democratic government is too perfect for men; it is only fit for angels.

This judgment must be considered in the light of what we have already said a little time ago concerning the dangers of Democracy. We then pointed out that there were grave dangers that might render what was theoretically a perfect form of government in practice a terrible curse ; and we showed that the root of the danger lay exactly in the evil teaching of the presentday and in the schools which instead of inculcating into people the eternal truths inspired them with a materialistic conception of life directly calculated to make good democratic government an impossibility for the reason at which Rousseau hints in the foregoing words. Man is prone to be anything but an angel, and if Democracy is to thrive he needs to be lifted up and endowed with the virtues which can make him as the angels. Self-denial, charity, chastity, honesty, religion, are not the virtues'- men learn in our schools to-day; but they are very decidedly the virtues which men must learn before a democratic government can succeed. Is there any need to prove a truth so clear as this Is it not supported by everyday experience? Is not the tendency of modern ideals to turn man loose like a wild beast with bared fangs and rending claws on his fellow man? Homo homini hi pus —“ Man like a wolf to his brother-man.” And so hard is it to imagine even the possibility of raising man to a level so high that he might be fit for a pure Democracy that no sane person entertains any idea that it can ever be done: at best we can but have a Democracy with safeguards and limitations o£ such a nature as the evil proneness of mankind demand. In an ideal Democracy every citizen should have a real share in the government; and that would presuppose such a perfection of morals and such an .unanimity in goodness as to make for unanimity in governing ; it would presuppose a simplicity of life and a standard of selfdenial possible, indeed, in small communities but never to be realised in the world of men as they are: in one word it would presuppose that virtue was at the root of human conduct and religion the guiding force in men’s lives. What need is there further to delay in showing how far from actual such hypotheses are and how far from being even within the sphere of practical politics? Such are existing conditions that the establishment of a pure Democracy such as we here speak of would entail all sorts of internal strife and dis-

turbances instead of the perfect order and unanimity we dream of. And so it will be as long as men are swayed by motives of selfishness, by greed, by lust, by ambition —as long as (to quote Carlyle) they are mostly, fools. Therefore the most we can hope for is a government for the people. The time will never come when we shall see. a successful government by the people. We have found out by sad experience that neither a Monarchy nor an Oligarchy is a government for the people in practice. Under ideal conditions

either may be good but the test of time has found that neither is . likely to be good. The trend is now towards a modified form of government by the people, imperfect like all things human but. of great latent potentialities. .

Few have as yet any clear notion of what must be done to make government by the people safe; .but it may be taken as a principle that the first thing to be ; - done is to make it certain that government for the people is more important than government by the

people. The idea of a referendum as we have it is retrograde : that is government Hy the .people snd not always for them: it .can never be held that such a means is for the people unless it be granted that the majority are always right; and experience and common sense tell us that the majority are by no means always right; and that they are more likely to be wrong. To put a law made by legislators appointed by the people before them with the intention of finding out whether or no the majority would be in favor of it is reasonable enough, but to make a law and pass it because a majority of one demand it certain to be wrong. Yet that is the shallow conception of Democracy we appear to entertain. Not a word more need be said to prove how harmful such a Democracy could be: our own New Zealand Government is a lesson and a “warning. A concrete example may help to illustrate what can be done; President Wilson was elected by the Democrats of the United States, but he very soon gave them to understand that he was not a mouthpiece of the idol Demos but a man who was put there to use his brains and abide by his principles. He was put in power by the people; they can put him out again ; but while he is there as their representative he means to govern for them. Similarly the best we .can do is to select the best —not pot-hunters or politicians, but men of integrity and ability in whom we have confidence and who are more fitted to make laws than we are. We must not expect them to let their brains lie fallow or to be false to their principles because a popular outcry wants something they do not consider good for us; in a word we must not put them there as puppets to dance to mob law, but as reliable and trusted guides whom we can dismiss as soon as we lose confidence in them. And once again, it is clear that we cannot get such men, and we cannot even elect them if we have them, until the people are educated to recognise that virtue is the sure guide of conduct and that in the eternal Law of God we have beacons which mark the only safe course whether in political or in private life. We have not the schools to give us such universal education yet; but we have men in power who know that as soon as we have such schools their day is over. Therefore we must either get rid of our present politicians or compel them to legislate for the people. And the first step is the recognition instead of the boycott of schools which teach children the fundamental truths on which stability in individual-and family life and in society is based. Until that is done it matters very little what sort of government we have: all will be bad enough and the motto they will follow will be: Seek first your own interest and let the rest go. The conclusion of all this brings us back to the schools: only in the schools which teach men to model their lives on Christ can the people be made fit for Democracy.