The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-08-12
A NEW CRITIC OF DEMOCRACY.

The United States government has
been blessing to mankind in many
ways. 1t has afforded a home to the
oppressed of all nations, and it has
afforded theme to the writ
ers of all nations who have de-
sired to illustrate their theories of gov
eminent to point moral or adorn a
tale. The latest writer of any reputa-
! ton to put forth his opinion of Ameri-
can institutions and their success or
failure is Jerome K. Jerome, the nov
elist The role of political philosopher
is new to Mr.. Jerome, and like all
parvenus he overdoes the thing. Here
Is his opinion:
Democracy is an idle folly and no
/ one but an uneducated fool can believe
/ in it. Ten thousand idiots cannot teach
] one child the wisdom of democracy.
/ 1t has been given its chance, and its
value has been proved. 1t grew up as
. weed from the worlds highway in
the early morning of history, to be
trampled under foot with a laugh as
the pioneers of the human race pushed
their slow way across the Ural noun
tains. It was reared again in Greece
and Rome, to be moved down by the
sword. 1t had its opportunity in
France 100 years ago. and it was
swept away. 1t was set up to be Wor-
shipped in America, and today America
worships the almighty dollar, and the
I almighty dollar tyranniZeS over her
with rod of gold. such as no people
in the old monarchial days would have
tolerated. Democracy has not even the
vitality to perpetuate its own species.
Its child is invariably a despotism
Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell and
Napoleon, each sprang from the womb
of democracy"
The opinion itself is not worthy of a
moments thought or reflection. but it
is exceedingly well expressed. A great
Englishman, a man famous as a stu
dent Of politics and history, once wrote
a history of federal government and it
was to be brought down to
what he was pleased to term
the fall of the American republic. That
Englishman was the late Edward
Freeman, and the period to which he
intended to bring his work
down was the American civil war
The issue of that war made it neces-
sary to change the title of his work in
appears not to have brought his
studies of American institutions down
to a time subsequent to the civil war
Against this opinion of the novelist
Jerome. let US put that of an English
man who has studied American institu-
tons, and whose education and posi-
ton eminently fitted him for the task,
Mr.. James Bryce, whose American
Commonwealth" stands alongside of
De Tocqueville's Democracy in Amer
ica."
Jerome reasons from analogy. or
rather he cites a few historical Incl
dents not taking into consideration
conditions surrounding those Incidents
He failed, if he ever tried to overcome
them, to note and make allowance for
differences of times and circumstances.
Professor Bryce says:
Few things are more difficult than
to use Alright arguments founded on
the political experience of other coun-
tries. AS the chief practical use of
history is to deliver us from plausible
analagies, so a comprehension of the
institutions of other nations enables
us to expose sometimes the ill
grounded hopes, sometimes the idle
fears, which loose reports about those
nations generate. Direct differences
from the success or failure of a par
ticular constitutional arrangement or
political usage in another country are
rarely found, because the conditions
differ in so many respects that there
can be no certainty that what -four
isheS or languiShes under other skies
and in another soil will likewise flour
ish or languish in our own.
But even in these cases he who de-
sires to rely on the results shown in
must first satisfy himself
that there is such a parity of condi-
tons and surroundings in respect to the
particular matter as justifies him in
reasoning directly from ascertained re-
suits there to probable results in his
own country
Mr.. Jerome has satisfied himself in
regard to all this by assumption and
not by investigation. 1t is the appli-
cation of the methods of the novelist
to the matter of the historian and
student of political institutions.
Against the pessimistic view of Jerome
let us place the matured view of Bryce.
what he the European reader)
probably fails to do. because this is
what the writer is most likely to fail |
in enabling him to do, is to realize tha
existence in the American people of a |
reserve force and patriotism more than
sufficient to sweep away all the evils !
which are now tolerated, and to make |
the politics of the country worthy of |
its material grandeur and of tho pri-
vate virtues of the inhabitants"
All this Jerome, the novelist, has
failed to realize. but he is content to !
substitute his conceit and self-suffi- |
cheney for study and reflection. If he
is content with his criticism so are
hos NIB