DEMOCRACY AND THE 



ACCEPTED FACTS OF HEREDITY 



A Biological View of Government 



Allevne Ireland, F.R.G.S. 



IT WOULD be necessary to go back 

 to the period of the French Revolu- 

 tion and of the American War of 

 Independence to find a public dis- 

 cussion of political principles as volu- 

 minous as that which has poured from 

 the printing-presses of the world dur- 

 ing the past four years. 



Of this vast literature I cannot pro- 

 fess to have read more than a small 

 proportion; but what has fallen under 

 my eye discloses the extremely interest- 

 ing fact that, after more than two 

 thousand years of controversy about 

 political forms, opinion at the beginning 

 of the twentieth century appears to be 

 unanimous in accepting democracy 

 based upon universal suffrage as the 

 best system of government. Not the 

 least curious phase of this unanimity is 

 that it should have been reached at a 

 time when democracy was engaged in 

 a struggle in which its very existence 

 was for a long time under the gravest 

 threat, and from which it finally 

 emerged triumphant only because it 

 completely abandoned, for the duration 

 of the war, every principle upon which 

 democracy rests. 



During the course of the discussions 

 which are now taking place at 

 Versailles every aspect of political 

 practice is certain to be taken up by the 

 delegates, and conventional political 

 theory will, no doubt, receive the hom- 

 age of oratory. The moment, then, is 

 not inopportune to advance a certain 

 consideration about politics which has 

 hitherto received very scant attention 

 — the bearing of biological laws upon 

 political principles. 



It is not without great diffidence that 

 I embark upon this undertaking, for I 

 am not a biologist. A simple explana- 

 tion will, however, make my position 

 clear. For twenty-five years I have 

 been a student of government; and my 

 studies have taken me to a score of 

 countries, and have made me familiar 

 with a dozen governmental systems, 

 ranging between the extremes of the 

 autocratic and of the democratic forms. 



The broadest generalisation which 

 my observation justifies — the one sub- 

 ject to the fewest exceptions — is that 

 the best governed countries were those 

 in which the mass of the people had the 

 least control over the administration of 

 public affairs. By "best governed" I 

 mean best provided with internal peace, 

 with justice, with honest and competent 

 officials, with protection for life, prop- 

 erty, with freedom of individual ac- 

 tion, with arrangements for promoting 

 the general welfare. 



To have reached, after very long and 

 very careful investigation, a conclusion 

 so violently opposed to popular opinion 

 and to the teaching of the schools, was 

 sufficiently disturbing to lead me to a 

 reconsideration of the whole subject 

 for the purpose of discovering, if pos- 

 sible, why almost everything I had ob- 

 served about democratic governments 

 discredited almost everything I had 

 read in their praise. To this task I 

 devoted a great part of my time during 

 1916 and 1917. I proceed to sum- 

 marize the results, leaving for a future 

 article, should the matter prove to be of 

 sufficient public interest, a fuller dis- 

 cussion of certain phases which are 

 here but lightly touched upon. 



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