Review of Reviews, tO/SJ06. 



Leading Articles, 



291 



••DELUSIONS OF DEMOCRACY." 



A Wail and a Retort. 



M. Pobedonostseff writes in the Cosmoplitan 

 what his editor calls " The Dying Words o-f Auto- 

 cracy,' and what he calls " The Delusions of De- 

 mocracy." The Russian writer says there is no de- 

 lusion more vain than the modern belief in demo- 

 cracy as a panacea for all social ills. The test of 

 history shows that the only races fit for self-govern- 

 ment are those who have from immemoria. time 

 practised the art of governing themselves. The 

 capacity of the Anglo-Saxon races for ruling them- 

 selves by popular machinery is as old as Tacitus. 

 In France, however, the results of an attempt at 

 democracy are the crushing of all freedom of life 

 and activity, an officialdom which is the blind instru- 

 ment of the central power, a false expression of the 

 will of the people, separation of Church and State, 

 suppression of all unauthorised associations. " The 

 freedom which is supposed to be established by the 

 non-interference of the State with religious and 

 political convictions becomes a delusive mirage as a 

 result of the natural intolerance of divided demo- 

 cracies." 



CULTURE INEFFECTIVE. 



M. Pobedonostseff concludes with a fling at cul- 

 ture as well as democracv. He says: — 



The belief that freedom and parliamentary institutions 

 are capable of solving the darkest problems is not, how- 

 ever, more widespread and delusive than the belief that 

 the intellectual progress of nations is by itself sufficient to 

 insure their happiness. How baseless is this assumption 

 we are only beginning to see to-day, when whole masses 

 of cultivated nations are sunk in a hopeless pessimism 

 which is the very result of an excess of culture. Disillu- 

 sioned, unnerved, despairing men and women finally abjure 

 all higher intellectual inspirations, setting a value only 

 upon that which can be tangibly seized, and which brings 

 positive material benefit and profit. 'ITie majority of these 

 victims of modern culture suffer from a peculiar spiritual 

 neurasthenia, and a complete lack of ideas. Culture alone, 

 in fact, solves no problem of life, but may be set side by 

 side with pretended freedom and delusive democracy as 

 ineffective for the solution of the tremendous problems of 

 popular discontent and disorder now facing the world 



"TIIE TSAR'S MAN ANSWERED." 



To this jeremiad Mr. Charles Ferguson, author 

 of " The Religion of Democracy," retorts, under 

 the head of " The Tsar's Man Answered," with some 

 vigour. He says : — 



The discovery that the real rulers of the world are not 

 the persons that sit on thrones or in cabinets, but those 

 that have the initiative of industry — those that can say 

 who shall have work and wages, and when and where 

 and how they shall work — this discovery is of immense 

 portent. Henceforth the emotional centre of human in- 

 terest cannot lie in any question of the forms of politics. 

 Great men like yourself have, from the beginning, been so 

 preoccupied in deciding who ought to have the disposal of 

 the goods of life, that they never have thought about the 

 production of goods. In consequence, the world is even 

 now for the most part miserably poor. To put tools into 

 the hands that can use them, to economise the creative 

 forces of the people, to give credit to the trustworthy and 

 promotion to the efficient — this, Mr. Pobedonostseff, and not 

 anarchy or atheism, is the current tendency of democratic 

 inbtitutions. 



TYRANNY OF KING. SI AVEHOLDER, AND TRUST. 



Apropos of contending autocrat and democrat 

 may be quoted the words of Ernest Crosby in the 



same magazine on " The Money Power and our 

 Next Great President." America needs a third to 

 do for to-day what Washington and Lincoln did for 

 their days. He closes: — 



King power, slave power, money power ! Two of them 

 have fallen. Who will tackle the third.' It will be no 

 operation of pin pricks, but it will require a sharp knife, 

 a steady hand, and a determined heart. As Andrew Jack- 

 son took the United States Bank by the throat, so the 

 selfish gamblers of to-day, whose authentic exploits are 

 chronicled in our magazines month after month and in 

 the daily reports of investigation committees, and whose 

 pawns are made of flesh and blood, must bo shorn of their 

 privileges and sent back chastened to the place of equal 

 opportunity with their fellow-citizens. We need a man 

 who will go into the Senat-e of the United States and into 

 the Ways and Means Committee-room with a whip of small 

 cords. And it is high time that he were here. 



Bibliography of Geography. 



The fourteenth volume, covering the year 1904, of 

 the " Bibliographic Geographique Annuelle," issued 

 in connection with the Annales de Geographic, has 

 just been published. Prepared under the direction 

 of H. Louis Raveneau, with the aid of a number 

 of contributors, the Bibliography, which runs to 336 

 pages, analyses and classifies the chief books and 

 articles on geographical topics which have appeared 

 during the past year. Publications in French, Eng- 

 lish, German, Italian, and other languages are in- 

 cluded. In addition to this Annual Bibliography of 

 Geography, a General Index to the articles pub- 

 lished in the first ten years of the Annales de Geo- 

 graphic (October, 1891 — November, 1901) has been 

 issued. The review appears every two months, the 

 September number being always the annual Biblio- 

 graphy. M. Raveneau and the editors of the Annales 

 are to be congratulated on the success of their un- 

 dertakings. (Arrnan^^ Colin, 5 Rue de M^zieres, 

 Paris.) 



Echoes of a Finished Fight. 



Protection being now dead and buried in this 

 country, it is hardly worth while to quote from 

 articles on the subject. It may be mentioned, how- 

 ever, that the Edinburgh Review publishes an ela- 

 borate examination of the effect of Protection, upon 

 employment. Its conclusions are thus summar- 

 ised : — 



First, a general tariff such as Mr. Chamberlain proposea, 

 would almost inevitably lessen the aggregate national 

 dividend; secondly, it would not increase the proportion of 

 that dividend that goes to the labouring classes in any way 

 th.it could save them from absolute loss; thirdly, so far from 

 yielding an incidental compensation to the poor by lessen- 

 ing the numbers out of work or the fluctuations of employ- 

 ment, it would tend to make both the^e evils worse than 

 they are at present. 



The Editor recalls the fact that at the great 

 Liberal Unionist Conference in the Westminster 

 Town Hall in December, 1887, Lord Hartington, 

 the leader of the party, predicted that if anyone 

 attempted to revive Protection it would shatter the 

 Unionist Party. 



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