CHAPTER II 



THE BANKRUPTCY OF LIBERALISM 



In attempting to indicate, not a solution of tlie social problem 

 as such — ^for that problem, like the poor, will be always with us — 

 but some remedies for the condition of social uneasiness and 

 instabihty in which we find ourselves at present, it is weU, or 

 rather it is essential, to examine the nature of that social polity 

 under which civiUsed societies, as a whole, exist to-day. The 

 regime imder which European nations, as also the great trans- 

 atlantic Repubhc of the United States, and Japan — which must, 

 indeed, be considered as one of the great Powers of the world 

 after the defeat of Russia — are all governed is what we term 

 the Liberal regime — that is to say, the regime of Parliamentary 

 government, of government by the people themselves. Degrees 

 exist in the appUcation of the Liberal regime, as in the applica- 

 tion of everything else ; but one thing common to all the civiUsed 

 nations of the world — except Russia, whose contribution to Euro- 

 pean culture has not, as yet, been proportionate to the numbers 

 of her population, owing to the peculiar state of her internal 

 afEairs — ^is that they all possess a ParUament, a representative 

 body, elected by popular sufirage, and sometimes, as in France 

 and Germany, by universal suffrage, and that, in a word, their 

 form of government is popular, as distinct from personal or abso- 

 lute.^ In Great Britain the Liberal — ^by which we mean the 

 popular — form of government^ has existed for centuries, and is 



' This was written before the meeting of the first Bussian Duma. 

 2 It must be very clearly understood that we employ the word " Liberal " 

 in a general sense, as indicating " representative " traditions, in distino- 



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