10 
LAND & WATER 
June 7, 191 7 
people for more important things." ,. . ' 
" But,'* said I, " there is nothing more important than 
pohtics." 
This remark seemed to amuse rather than to impress th? 
venerable Dr. Hale, and, alter indicating his amusement in 
-an appropriate manner, he presently said, " Thank God. 
we need very little government in this country." 
" But what," I asked, " takes the place of government " ? 
" Good temper," said he. 
This conversation, 1 say, took place many years ago, and 
since then I have been several times in America and convinced 
myself, by meditation on the spot, of the essential truth of 
the words of Dr. Hale. I have further come to the con- 
clusion that there is an even closer connexion between the 
facts than his words conveyed. It is precisely because the 
Americans have attempted less than ourselves in the way of 
centralised government that they have achieved more in the 
way of good temper. It has not been sufficiently noted 
by" ptjlitical philosophers, that the process of law-making, 
especially under party go\ernment, is not conducive to sweet 
reasonableness, but to sour unreasonableness ; and is a process 
therefore which should always be kept within the narrowest 
limits compatible with order by any people which values its 
good temper above the mere forms of law. Even Jeremy 
Bentham, the father of innumerable laws, regarded all 
legislation as an evil. Law-making feeds bad temper in 
three ways : first, by the multitude of quarrels engendered in 
the actual process of making the law; secondly, by the re- 
calcitrancy of the citizens who, in spite of the assurance that 
the law has been made by their own representatives, and there- 
fore ultimately by themselves, often persist for good reasons 
in believing the contrary, and kick ; thirdly, by the bitter 
disappointments, and the consequent recriminations, whicii 
loUow the discovery — always made after each new piece of 
legislation — that it does not produce half the good the law 
expected of it. All which might be abundantly illustrated, 
if space permitted, by our own political history from the 
time of Free Trade to the passing of Mr. Lloyd George's 
Insurance Act. 
These facts when attentively considered lead up to the 
moral that a wise democracy, one, that is, which values good 
temper as the greatest of all political assets, will try to manage 
its common liie with the minimum of legislation, will, in fact, 
endeavour so to educate the citizen as to make good temper 
do the work of government, and will resolutely turn its 
back on the notion that the maximum of legislation is the 
democratic ideal. 
In this country we have never understood the American 
democracy, and it is greatly to be hoped, indeed it is certain, 
that from now onwards we shall begin to understand it and 
thereby learn something for our own good — something too, 
that will deeply influence the future career of democracy all 
over the world. The American nation has appeared to us 
an undisciplined nation, and some political doctrinaires have 
been led by this appearance to entertain a doubt as to 
whether the Americans were a nation at all. We have not 
recognised that beneath the apparent want of discipline tJiere 
, was an inner organization of good temper, a thing which 
cannot be reduced to any system, nor embodied in the letter 
of any constitution or statute of the realm, but which none 
the less holds the secret of a unity and a power far beyond 
anything which centralized legislation has so far accomphshed 
in the w-orld -as the Germans will presently discover. By 
her isolation, hitherto, from the entanglements of European 
politics. America has gained a freedom to develop her owTi 
interqal structure which no other democracy has enjoyed. 
The rest, our own in particular, have been checked and to 
some extent diverted from our true line of development by the 
menace of powerful neighbouring autocracies, which were call- 
ihg the tune in European politics— as they w'ill continue to 
do so long as any of them remain extant on the eatth. l<reed 
from this menace the American democracy has grown up on 
human fines. Not clearly enough it is true, but more clearly 
than any other nation, the Americans have seen that the 
success of democracy, and the greatness of the i)eo])le who 
adopt it, is not to be measured by the number and efficiency of 
the police, but by the good temper which renders the interven- 
tion of the p.ilice unnecessary. It is the soundest form of 
jioUtical idealism. 
These thoughts I humbly commend to those persons, 
now a great multitude, both American and British, 
who are engaged in schemes for reconstructing society 
after the war. Among the many sciiemes of this kind, 
some of them very ambitious, which it has been my 
lot to examine, 1 have not seen one which would find the 
world unanimous in its reception. But I have seen many 
which would put the fat in the fire with a vengeance — 
of which perhaps, the League to enforce Peace may be 
instanced as the chief. Is it too much to plead with all 
reconstructors that they shou^d carefully consider the 
danger ahead ? The danger is that the effect of their 
proposals, which are intended to do good, may be to 
proniote quarrels, and so make the temper of mankind 
even worse than it now is. In that event they will do nu 
good at all. For my own part 1 look with greater hope to 
that man,- if any such man there be, wJio can give some hint, 
. or speak some word, or do some deed which will put ci\-iliza- 
tion in a good temper. America perhaps will provide the 
world with such a man. He will bear a resemblance to 
Abraham Lincoln. It was a most promising sign that in 
President Wilson's great speech to Congress there was no 
bad temper. How much greater a thing it is to go to war in 
a good temper than to plead for peace in a bad one ! At this 
alone a wise Germany would have trembled. 
r 
/))/ roiirloj/ of ".NVir Yorl Fren'mn WnrU.' 
•• We'll hold those Berhn Olympics ourselves, by Heck " 
