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PART I

SOME ASPECTS OF

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

CHAPTER I

ANCIENT LIGHTS

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and laboured with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves were they to rise from the dead . . . laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.-THOMAS Jefferson, in 1816.

Ir is assuredly of great moment that, as Mr. Shaw says, the English Constitution is revolutionary. The grand question, however, is this: Is it creative? We here inquire whether it promotes the greatest possible entrance of intelligence, science and benevolence into the government of the country.

An examination of the governing institutions of this country in the light of this inquiry is disturbing. It cannot completely reassure the person who is convinced that without such creativeness, and the application of knowledge and sympathy to present-day social problems, we must continue to go along wastefully and miserably. The wisdom of our ancestors," in Burke's phrase, has provided us with a tradition in political theory and institutions. That tradition has been quite outgrown by social organisation during the last half-century, and the driving force behind this development remains as strong and even more urgent than before. It is worth

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