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Show J MAINE ON DEMOCRACY. J Sir Henry Sumner Maine, the distinguished distin-guished writer on Ancient Law and kindred kin-dred subjects, has just issued, through John Murray, four essays on Popular Government. He puts the following estimate esti-mate upon the worth of American democracy: de-mocracy: ' The short history of the'Dnited States has established one momentous negative conclusion. conclu-sion. . When a Demooracy governs it is not safe to leave unsettled any important question ques-tion concerning the exercise of publio powers. I might give many instances of this, but the most conclusive is the war of Secession, which was entirely owing to the omission of the 'fathers' to provide beforehand for the solution of certain constitutional problems, lest they should stir the topio of negro slavery. It would seem that by a wise constitution con-stitution Democracy may be made nearly as calm as water in a great artificial reservoir ; but if there is a weak point anywhere in the structure the mighty force which it controls will burst through it and spread destruction far and near. The estimate is not complimentary, and what is of far more importance, it is not just. There is almost a sneer in the estimate. es-timate. It is often said that the friends of an institution or a theory are incapable j of properly weighing its worth, or of seeing see-ing its detects. The same may be said of those who have no sympathy with an institution or a theory, or who may be somewhat hostile to it. It would be unjust to say that Sir Henry has no sympathy with popular government, for he has; but his sympathy for popular government is only for popular government as found in England. Eng-land. To the majority of Englishmen the unwritten Constitution of England is a thing for constant adoration. The Constitution of England may e epitomized epito-mized in the maxim of the common law, "Parliament is supreme," and this means that the House, in contradistinction to the Crown and Lords, is supreme. The English Constitution is worthy of the profoundest respect, and it ' is to the ' love of freedom which it has ever engendered in the breasts of Englishmen that America owes her own institutions. The spirit which actuated the Fathers of the Revolution was the same spirit which actuated Pym and Hampden, Milton, Sydney and Cromwell, and it was this same spirit which actuated.tho.se who suppressed secession and" freed the negro. It is an honor to mankind and a song of praise to democracy that the United States stood the strain of the greatest civil war the world has ever seen ; but still Sir Henry Maine sees no merit in a written writ-ten Constitution. Certainly there must be some merit in the written Constitution of the United States to have stood the test it has and still be the fundamental law of the land in which it had its birth. After all, the safeguards of freedom in all countries and under all forms of government govern-ment must be in the hearts of the people and their attachment to liberty, and so great is this in the hearts of the American Ameri-can people that they are well content to abide by the law of 'the Fathers of the Revolution. j |
