TRIUMPHANT DEMOCRACY.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 490, 19 July 1890, Page 6

TRIUMPHANT DEMOCRACY.

Mr Samuel Laing, an Englishman of much distinction, who is a member of Parliament* and has been Finance Minister of India, a member of the Board of Tx-ade and the managing director of several great railway and commercial companies, and whoso opinions command general respect, has contributed .an article to the current number of the ‘ Contemporary Review,’ entitled ‘ Aristocracy or Democracy,’ and his language concerning the United States is welwortli quoting, Mr Laing says : ‘ I, will refer first to the United States, for here theproblem of democracy has been tried on the largest scale and to the fullest extent. Prior to the great war and the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln the selections of the captains and ofiicei’s to navigato the American state had been marie, for many years, practically by a select aristocracy, the Southern planters. Since then the “loblolly-boys,” as I suppose Profossor Huxley would call them—that is, the great democratic mass of the community, on the one-man-one-vote principle have had it all their own way. What has been the result ? Nothing has impressed mo more than the exceeding wisdom and sobriety with which all really important matters have been dealt with by this democratic community. Take the most important act of their political life, the quadrennial election of Presidents. They have elected an uninterrupted succession of highly fib men ; in some cases, like that of Lincoln, their greatest man ; in all, men of high character and »ound judgment, untainted by any suspicion of loose morality or of extravagant demogogism—men who were fair, or rather excellent representatives of the best traits of the national character. . . . Take the man-

agemenb of foreign affairs, which is, perhaps, the be3b test of whe statesmanship, and that in which the opponents of democracy have predicted the woret consesequences from the transfer of political power from tho classes to the masses. That of the United States has been uniformly wise and successful. In no single case can ib be said bhab tho foreign policy and diplomacy of the United States have been unwise or met with a rebuff.

* And in great domestic questions, whero demagogic incitements were not wanting, the same wise and provident policy has been equally conspicuous. * At the conclusion of the war the nation found itself loaded with an enormous debt and an inflated currency. , Most of this debt had been incurred in paper depreciated far below its gold value. Surely here was a case,if ever,where the “loblolly boys” and common sailors mi"ht have been expected to listen to the seductions ot demagogues, who were not wanting, telling them that they ought not to submit to excessive taxation in order to pay in full in gold the cormorant capitalists who had advanced their loans in paper. But no! the maxim that “ honestyjis the best policy ” was so ingrained in the nature of the American masses that they submitted cheerfully to a load of taxation which converted the United States from one of the cheapest into one of the dearest countries in the world, and the demagogues, instead of riding into power on popular prejudice, found themselves simply ostracised from public life. Space forbids my pursuing the subject farther, and it is sufficient to say that I challenge any dispassionate observer to say that democracy has been a failure in America.’