Like energy was shown in a like case in Switzerland in 1918, the great bulk of the nation approving the energetic action of the Federal Council. The same may be said of Canada, which has faithfully preserved the British traditions which make the vindication of the law the first duty of the Executive. Strikes which pass into violence are in our own day the most frequent causes of trouble, and the most difficult to deal with, because, although workmen on strike admittedly possess the right of endeavouring to induce those whom employers are trying to hire in their place not to accept the work offered, "Peaceful Picketing" is apt to pass into threats or something more than threats, nor is it easy to draw the line.1

In some of the American State Governments there has been laxity on the part of officials and slackness in action by the citizens when summoned to aid in preserving order. Lynching prevails extensively in several of the Middle as well as in most Southern States, and, though the opinion of thoughtful men condemns the practice, some Governors or Mayors who have tried to repress it did not receive the support they deserved. It is also stated that locally elected officials are often remiss in enforcing the payment of taxes, and prone to acquiesce in minor breaches of the law lest they should incur enmities which would endanger their re-election.2

In trying to answer the broad question from which this chapter started, whether a democratic Executive can be a strong Executive, let us distinguish two different senses which the question may bear. An Executive is strong against the citizens when the law grants it a wide discretionary authority to command them and override their individual rights. There is nothing to prevent a democracy from vesting any powers over the private citizen it pleases in its elected magistrates. This kind of strength, strictly limited

1 Leniency to law-breakers is by no means confined to labour unions or radical democrats. It was observed in England on two recent occasions that the law-respecting spirit is only skin deep, once when during the South African war attacks by mobs upon the houses of persons believed to be opposed to that war were palliated by persons of high official standing, and again when between 1907 and 1912 the destruction of churches (including the exploding of a bomb in Westminster Abbey) and the setting fire to houses by militant suffragettes were defended or excused by many members of the "most respectable" classes.

2 See Vol. II., Chap. XLIII. ante.

in English-speaking countries, has been allowed to remain not only in Italy, Belgium, and Spain, but in France, where the Republican parties, though sometimes admitting that individual liberty is not duly safeguarded, do not like to part with a power they may need for crushing plots directed against the Republic.

But there is another sense in which the strength of an Executive is measured by its relation to the other powers in the State. The people may make it independent of the legislature, choosing it by their own vote, possibly for a long term of years. They may enable it to defend itself against the legislature by giving it a veto and a sole initiative in foreign affairs. The United States has gone furthest in this direction, and its President, independent of Congress for a four years' term, is the least fettered of all Executives in free countries, though his power declines in moral authority as that term draws to its end, and though the temptation to seek re-election may unduly affect his independence. Continuity in policy is hard to secure where the representative assembly and the Executive are liable to be changed by frequently recurring elections. Ministers who may be swept out of office by a hostile vote of the legislature, or may see the legislature itself pass under the control of the party opposed to their own, are often deterred from bold action by the fear that it may endanger their own position, or may be reversed by their successors. They are unwilling to propose measures, however salutary, that are likely to be unpopular, and tempted to bid for support by promising bills whose chief merit is their vote-catching quality. This sort of instability and discontinuity is the price which must be paid for that conformity to the popular will of the moment which democracy implies. It is of course more harmful where the people itself is inconstant or capricious. Such have been some democratic peoples, such may be some of those that are now starting on their career as independent States. But it so happens that none of the nations we have been studying presents this character. In all of them there often comes a "swing of the pendulum" from one party to another at a general election, and sometimes the change rises into what Americans call a "tidal wave." These oscillations are, however, mostly due not to changes of opinion on

CHAP. LX

EXECUTIVE INSTABILITY

365

large principles, but to displeasure with errors committed by the Ministry. Even the French, supposed to be of an excitable temper, are at bottom a conservative nation, safely anchored some to one, some to another set of ideas and beliefs. Nowhere are changes of Ministry so frequent as in France; nowhere do they mean so little. Nevertheless, it remains true that the uncertain tenure of any particular Ministry both there and in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and this is true of England also does operate to disturb the course of administration as well as legislation. The results of this enquiry may be summed up as follows:

Ministries in democratic countries are no better in their composition, so far as ability is concerned, than they are elsewhere, for political reasons may do as much to prevent the selection of the fittest men, as secret intrigues do in monarchies or oligarchies. They are, however, more generally honest, being exposed to a more searching criticism than other forms of government provide.

The principle of equality has had the useful result of securing free access for all to the permanent Civil Service of the State and of restraining the tendency to favouritism in promotions. The United States, where patronage was most abused, has by degrees fallen into line with other democracies, and its Civil Service is correspondingly improving. Democratic governments, not being militaristic in spirit, are reluctant to vote money for war preparations, but when convinced that there is a danger of aggression, they rise to the emergency. The Executive in a parliamentary democracy suffers from its slippery foothold, which often prevents it from carrying through those legislative or administrative schemes of reform, the success of which depends on their maintenance for a course of years.1 Uncertainty of tenure deters it from action, however otherwise desirable, that is likely to offend any body of voters strong enough to turn the balance against it at an election. So, too, Opposition

1 No one can sit in a British Cabinet without being struck by the amount of time it spends in discussing parliamentary tactics, and especially how best to counter a hostile motion in the House of Commons. These things, small as they may seem, are urgent, for the life of the Cabinet may be involved, so the larger questions of legislation have to stand over, perhaps to be lost for the session.

leaders who hope to overthrow and replace the holders of power are apt to trim or "hedge" in order to win the favour of a section that may turn the scale in their favour.1 On the other hand, a Ministry can usually count upon the support of the great majority of the people in a war, or at any other grave crisis, and will then be quickly invested with exceptional powers. Even on less serious occasions, a democratic community, be it the nation or such a unit as an American State or city, will usually rally to a courageous chief who gives it a strong lead. Politicians fail more often by timidity than by rashness.

As regards general domestic administration, democracies have nothing to be ashamed of. We have found the civil servants are fairly competent in all the six democracies examined perhaps least so in the United States, where the results of the Spoils System are still felt- and the average of honesty is higher than it was in the less popular governments of the past. They are doubtless less efficient than was the bureaucracy of Germany before 1914, but efficiency was purchased at a price which free peoples cannot afford to pay.

1 These phenomena may be studied in the history of British political parties in their dealings with Ireland, especially since the rise of the Irish Home Rule party in 1875-8.

CHAPTER LXI

DEMOCRACY AND FOREIGN POLICY

1

STATESMEN, political philosophers, and historians have been wont to regard the conduct of foreign relations as the reproach of democratic government. The management of international relations needs so they insist-knowledge, consistency, and secrecy, whereas democracies are ignorant and inconstant, being moreover obliged, by the law of their being, to discuss in public matters unfit to be disclosed. That this has been perceived by the people themselves appears from the fact that modern legislatures have left this department to officials, because it was felt that in this one department democracies cannot safely be democratic.

Per contra, popular leaders in some countries have, with an increasing volume of support, denounced Foreign Offices as having erred both in aims and in methods. They allege that the diplomacy of European States is condemned by the suspicion which it has constantly engendered and that the brand of failure is stamped upon it by the frequent recurrence of war, the evil which diplomacy was created to prevent.

These views, apparently opposite, are not incompatible. Oligarchies, and the small official class which in many democracies has had the handling of foreign affairs, may have managed them ill, and yet it may be that the whole people will manage them no better. The fault may lie in the

1 This chapter, composed before the Armistice of November 1918, has been left unmodified (save by the addition of the last sentence), because the time has not come either to draw a moral as to what is called "secret diplomacy" from the negotiations of 1919-20, or to comment freely in a treatise such as this on the recent action of Governments and peoples in their attempts to restore peace and order in the world; not to add that the extraordinary events of the four preceding years had so disturbed the balance and normal working of men's minds as to make it unsafe to treat many things that have happened as supplying a basis for general conclusions.