Towards the Great Peace

by Ralph Adams Cram

Now it appears that in the past there have been just two methods whereby a civil polity has come into existence and established itself for a short period or a long. These two methods are, first, unpremeditated and sometimes unconscious growth; second, calculated and self-conscious revolution. The first method has produced communities, states and empires that frequently worked well and lasted for long periods; the second has had issue in nothing that has endured for any length of time or has left a record of beneficence. Evolution in government is in accord with the processes of life, even to the extent that it is always after a time followed by degeneration; revolution in government is the throwing of a monkey-wrench into the machinery by a disaffected workman, with the wrecking of the machine, the violent stoppage of the works, and frequently the sudden death of the worker as a consequence. The English monarchy from Duke William to Henry VIII, is a case of normal growth by minor changes and modifications, but its subsequent history has been one of revolutions, six or seven having occurred in the last four hundred years; the scheme which now holds, though precariously, is the result of the great democratic revolution accomplished during the reign of Queen Victoria. The free monarchies of Europe which began to take form during the long period of the Dark Ages and pursued their admirable course well through the Middle Ages, were also normal and slow growths; but the revolutions that have followed the Great War will meet a different fate, several of them, indeed, have counted their existence in months and have already passed into history.

If we are wise we shall discount revolutions for the future, for nothing but ill is accomplished by denying life and exalting the ingenious substitutes of ambitious and presumptuous Frankensteins; the result is too often a monster that works cleverly at first, and with a semblance of human intelligence, but in the end shows itself as a destroyer. Our task is to envisage, as clearly as possible, the political systems established amongst us, note their weaknesses either in themselves or in their relationship to society as it is, and then try to find those remedies that can be applied without any violent methods of dislocation or substitution; always bearing in mind the fact that the energizing force that will make them live, preserve them from deterioration, and adapt them to conditions which will ever change, is the spiritual force of human personality, and that this force comes only through the character qualities of the individual components of society.

Now in considering our own case in this day and generation there are first of all two matters to be borne in mind. One is that we shall do well to confine our inquiry to the United States, for while the defects we shall have to point out are common to practically all the contemporary governments of Europe and the Americas, our own enginery is different in certain ways, and our troubles are also different between one example and another. After all, our immediate interest must lie with our own national problems. The other point is that in criticising the workings of government in America we are not necessarily criticising its founders or the creators of its original constitutions, charters, and other mechanisms. The Constitution of the United States, for example, was conceived to meet one series of perfectly definite conditions that have now been superseded by others which are radically, and even diametrically different. The original Constitution was a most able instrument of organic law, but just because it did fit so perfectly conditions as they were four generations ago, it applies but indifferently to present circumstances, and even less well than the Founders hoped would be the case; for the reason that the amendments which were provided for have seldom taken cognizance of these changing conditions, and even when this was done the amendments themselves have not been wisely drawn, while certain of them have been actually disastrous in their nature, others frivolous, and yet more the result of ephemeral and hysterical ebullitions of an engineered public opinion. The same may be said of state constitutions and municipal charters, which have suffered incessant changes, mostly unfortunate and ill-judged, except during the last few years, when a spirit of real wisdom and constructiveness has shown itself, though sporadically and as yet with some timidity. The reforms, such as they are, are largely in the line of palliatives; the deep-lying factors, those that control both success and failure, are seldom touched upon. The necessary courage—or perhaps temerity—is lacking. What is needed is such a clear seeing of conditions, and such an approach, as manifested themselves in the Constitutional Convention of the United States, for in spite of the many compromises that were in the end necessary to placate a public opinion not untouched by prejudice, superstition and selfishness, the great document—and even more the records of the debates—still brilliantly set forth both the clear-seeing and the lofty attitude that characterized the Convention. Had these men been gathered together today, even the same men, they would frame a very different document, for they took conditions and men as they were, and, with an indestructible hope to glorify their common sense, they produced a masterpiece. It is in the same spirit that we must approach our problem of today.

Now in considering the situation that confronts us, we find certain respects in which either the methods are bad, or the results, or both. There is no unanimity in this criticism, indeed I doubt if any two of us would agree on all the items in the indictment, though we all might unite on one or two. I can only give my own list for what it is worth. In the first place we, in common with all the nations, have drifted into imperialism of a gross scale and illiberal, even tyrannical working. We could hardly do otherwise for such has been the universal tendency for more than an hundred years. By constant progression municipal governments have absorbed into themselves matters that in decency, and with any regard for liberty, belong to the individual. Simultaneously our state governments have followed the same course, infringing even on the just prerogatives of the towns and cities, while, more than all, the national government has robbed the states, the cities and the citizens of what should belong to them, until at last we have an imperial, autocratic, inquisitorial, and largely irresponsible government at Washington that is the one supreme political fact; we are no longer a Federal Republic but an Imperialism, in which is centralized all the authority inherent in the one hundred and ten millions of our population and from which a constantly diminishing stream of what is practically devolved authority, trickles down through state and city to the individual in the last instance—if it gets there at all! This I believe to be absolutely and fatally wrong. In the first place, human society cannot function at this abnormal scale, it is outside the human scale, for in spite of our pride and insolence there are limits on every hand to what man can do. In the second place, I conceive it to be absolutely at variance with any principle of republicanism or democracy or even of free monarchy. It is at one only with the imperialism of Egypt, Babylon, Rome and the late Empire of Germany. In a free monarchy, a republic, or a democracy, the pyramid of political organism stands, not on its point but broad-based and four-square, tapering upward to its final apex. A sane and wholesome society begins with the family—natural or artificial—which has original jurisdiction over a far greater series of rights and privileges than it now commands. From the family certain powers are delegated to the next higher social unit, the village or communal group, which in its turn concedes certain of its inherent rights to the organic group of communities, or states, and finally the states commit to the last and general authority, the national government, some of the elements of authority that have been delegated to them. The principle of this delegation from one organism to another, is common interest and welfare; only those functions which can be performed with more even justice and with greater effectiveness, by the community for example, than by the family, are so delegated. In the same way the several groups commit to their common government only so much as they cannot perform with due justice and equity to the others in the same group. In the end the national government exists only that it may provide for a limited number of national necessities, as for example, defence against extra-national aggression, the conduct of diplomatic relations with foreign powers, the maintaining of a national currency and a national postal service, the provision of courts of last resort, and the raising of revenue for the support of these few and explicit functions.

The first step, it seems to me, towards governmental reform, is decentralization, with a return to the States, the civic communities and the individual citizens of nine-tenths of the powers and the prerogatives that have been taken from them in defiance of abstract justice, of the principles of free government and of the theory of the workable unit of human scale. In a word we must abandon imperialism and all its works and go back to the Federal Republic.

The second cause of our troubles lies, I believe, in the institution of universal suffrage founded on the theory (or dogma) that the electoral franchise is an inalienable right. This doctrine is of recent invention, only coming into force during the "reconstruction period" following the War between the States, when it was brought forward by certain leaders of the Republican party to justify their enfranchisement of the negroes in the hope that by this act they could fix their party in power to perpetuity. In any case, the plan itself has worked badly, both for the community and for many of the voters. It is of course impossible for me to argue the case in detail; I can do hardly more than state my own personal belief, and this is that the question is wholly one of expediency, and that the question of abstract justice and the rights of man does not enter into the consideration. I submit that the electoral franchise should again be accepted as a privilege involving a duty, and not as a right inherent in every adult person of twenty-one years or over and not lunatic or in jail. This privilege, which in itself should confer honour, should be granted to those who demonstrate their capacity to use it honestly and intelligently, and taken away for cause.

The acute critic will not be slow to remind me that this proposition is somewhat beside the case and that it possesses but an academic interest, since we are dealing with a fait accompli. This is of course perfectly true. The electoral franchise could be so restricted only by the suffrages of the present electorate, and it is inconceivable that any large number, and far less, a majority, of voters would even consider the proposition for a moment. For good or ill we have unrestricted adult suffrage, and there is not the faintest chance of any other basis being established by constitutional means. Something however can be done, and this is a thing of great value and importance. What I suggest is concerted effort towards a measured purification of the electorate through the penalizing of law-breakers by temporary disfranchisement. It is hardly too much to assume that a man who deliberately breaks the law is constructively unfit to vote or to hold office, at all events, conviction for any crime or misdemeanour gives a reasonable ground for depriving the offender of these privileges, at least for a time. The law-breaking element, whether it is millionaire or proletarian, is one of the dangerous factors in society, which would lose nothing if from time to time these gentry were removed from active participation in public affairs. If, for example, any one convicted of minor offenses punishable by fine or imprisonment were disfranchised for a year, if of major offenses, for varying and increasing periods, from five years upwards, and if a second offense during the period of disfranchisement worked an automatic doubling of the time prescribed for a first offense, I conceive that the electorate would be measurably purified and that regard for the law would be stimulated. In one instance I am persuaded that disfranchisement should be for life, and that is in the case of giving or accepting a bribe or otherwise committing a crime against the ballot; this, together with treason against the state, should be sufficient cause for eliminating the offender from all further participation in public affairs. If the electorate could be purified after this fashion, and if more stringent laws could be passed in the matter of naturalization of aliens, together with iron-clad requirements that every voter should be able to speak, read and write the English language, we should have achieved something towards the safeguarding of the suffrage.

The third weakness in our system, and in some respect the most dangerous, as it is in all respects the most pestiferous, is the insanity of law-making. All parliamentary governments suffer from this malady, but that of the United States most grievously, and this is true of the national government, the states and the municipalities. It has become the conviction of legislative bodies that they must justify their existence by making laws, and the more laws they pass the better they have discharged their duties. The thing has become a scandal and an oppression, for the liberties of American citizens and the just prerogatives of the states and the cities, as vital human groups, have been more infringed upon, reduced, and degraded by free legislation than ever happened in similar communities by the action of absolute monarchs. It is a folly that works its insidious injury in two ways; first by confusing life by innumerable laws ill-advised, ill-drawn, mutually contradictory, ephemeral in their nature, inquisitorial in their workings; second, by creating a condition where any personal or factious interest can be served by due process of law, until at last we have reached a point where liberty itself has largely ceased to exist and we find ourselves crushed under a tyranny of popular government no less oppressive than the tyranny of absolutism. Nor is this all; the mania for making laws has bred a complete and ingenious and singularly effective system of getting laws made by methods familiar to the members of all legislative bodies whether they are city councils, state legislatures or the national congress, and this means opportunities for corruption, and methods of corruption, that are fast degrading government in the United States to a point where there is none so poor as to do it reverence. The whole system is preposterous and absurd, breeding not only bad laws, but a widespread contempt of law, while the personal freedom for which democracy once fought, is fast becoming a memory.

The trouble began as a result of one of the elements in the American Constitution which was the product not of the sound common sense and the lofty judgment of the framers, but of a weak yielding to one of the doctrinaire fads of the time that had no relationship to life but was the invention of political theorists, and that was the unnatural separation of the executive, legislative and judicial functions of government. The error has worked far and the superstition still holds. What is needed is an initiative in legislation, centred in one responsible head or group, that, while functioning in all normal and necessary legislative directions, still allows individual initiative on the part of the legislators, as a supplementary, or corrective, or protective agency. No government functions well in fiscal matters without a budget: what we need in legislative matters is a legislative budget, and by this phrase, I mean that the primary agency for the proposing of laws should be the chief executive of a city, or state or the nation, with the advice and consent of his heads of departments who would form his cabinet or council.

Under this plan the Governor and Council, for example, would at the opening of each legislative session present a programme or agenda of such laws as they believed the conditions to demand, and in the shape of bills accurately drawn by the proper law officer of the government. No such "government" bill could be referred to committee but must be discussed in open session, and until the bills so offered had been passed or refused, no private bill could be introduced. A procedure such as this would certainly reduce the flood of private bills to reasonable dimensions while it would insure a degree of responsibility now utterly lacking. There is now no way in which the author of a foolish or dangerous bill which has been enacted into law by a majority of the legislature, can be held to account and due responsibility imposed upon him, but the case would be very different if a mayor, a governor or the President of the United States made himself responsible for a law or a series of laws, by offering them for action in his own name. Certainly if this method were followed we should be preserved in great measure from the hasty, confused and frivolous legislation that at present makes up the major part of the output of our various legislative bodies. One of the greatest gains would be the reduction of the annual grist to a size where each act could be considered and debated at sufficient length to guarantee as reasonable a conclusion as would be possible to the members of the legislative body. The deplorable device of instituting committees, to each of which certain bunches of bills are referred before they are permitted to come before the house, would be no longer necessary. This system, which became necessary in order to deal with the enormous mass of undigested matter which has overwhelmed every legislature as a result of the present chaotic and irresponsible procedure, is perhaps both the most undemocratic device ever put in practice by a democracy, and the most fruitful of venality, corruption and injustice. It is unnecessary to labour this point for everyone knows its grave evils, but there seems no way to get rid of it unless some curb is placed on the number of bills introduced in any session. The British Parliament is not necessarily a model of intelligent or capable procedure, but where in one session at Westminster no more than four hundred bills were introduced, at Washington, for the same period, the count ran well over twelve thousand! Manifestly some committee system is inevitable under conditions such as this, but under the committee system free government and honest legislation are difficult of attainment.