The Manawatu Herald TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 1921. A FALSE DEMOCRACY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2265, 19 April 1921, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 1921. A FALSE DEMOCRACY.

THE Donn ui St. Paul's docs not agree Unit a democracy Ims been established when the ultimate sovereignly rests with the mass of the people. In a -pooch at Cambridge, ho declared that anything like a class war is absolutely incompatible with democratic government. Democracy is absolutely powerless in the fact of anti-social conspirators. It cannot deal with them. What kind” of Government has the democracy produced in practice? High-minded and self-respecting men would not consent to be mere delegates. The different ways of creeping into power in democracy were repugnant to any self-respect-ing men, and accordingly as Governments became more democratic \tie heller class of men were withdrawing more and more from conflicts. The oopinion of Professor Leekv was that Britain was best governed from 1832 to 1837. Since then things have been going downhill; but he thought history would put its linger on a particular year (190(1) and a particular measure (Trades Disputes Act) in which it would say that democratic constitutional government in Britain committed suicide. The Act exempted trade unions from the law of conspiracy, and thereby handed over the country bound hand and foot to sectional and anti-social conspiracy. Ever since then the Government had been increasingly impotent in the lace of raids made by various sooiinns of iho community. The country had been held up to ransom again and again by the trade unions, and the Government could do nothing. The impotence and futility of democratic government are now recognised not so much by the Conservatives or Liberals as by everyone of the new extreme and revolutionary party. Is it likely that the present stale of things will pass into a more democratic state? 1 do not think so. History seems to show that the natural course is not from sectional anarchy to democracy, nor from Socialism to democracy, but rather through sectional anarchy to bankruptcy, and from bankruptcy to some form of strong, generally military, government. Although democracy has been a rather pitiful failure, we might go further and fare worse. That imposing fetish which was erected by Rousseau, worshipped by the nineteenth century, and before which Americans even offered incense, is so far from holding the promise of the future that it lies shattered at the base of its pedestal.