The New York herald., 1922-12-17

Hannibal Clancy. Detroit: The Bentham
Institute.
THE LAW OF THE AMERICAN CONSTI-
TUITION. BY Charles X. Burdick G.. p.
Putnam's Sons
LEGISLATIVE PROCEDURE. BY Robert
Luce Houghton Mifflin Company.
THE ESSENTIALS OF AMERICAN GOV
ERNMENT BY Francis Newton Thorpe,
G. p. Putnam's Sons.
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT: STATU-
TORY AUTHORITIES FOR SPECIAL
PURPOSES. By Sidney and Beatrice
Webb Longmans. Green & Co.
CITY AND TOWNSHIP GOVERNMENT IN
THE UNITED STATES. By Kirk H. Por-
ter The Macmillan Company. =
TT is interesting, upon examining a
group of books on the subject of gov
ernment. to note how. divergent are
the methods of attack employed by the
various authors and how widely dissimiar
are the points of view. A majority of the
writer's will be of conservative turn of
mind, and will expound the merits of the
present order of things with gravity
matched only by their conviction that call
is well in the best OF all possible worlds :;
one or two will temper their seriousness
with a burning irony, and perhaps one or
two others will issue fiaring challenge
that will contrast vividly with the COM
monplaces of the majority.
All of these tendencies are to be OBJ
served in the books under review AS
might have been anticipated, the serious
and unoriginal expositions are in the ma
iority; but, while valuable for the student,
such works merely reexplore known terri
tory and make no new contribution to
political science. Yet, among the seven
volumes under consideration. there are one
or two that issue an appeal deserving of
widespread attention. and at least one that
may be characterized unqualifiedly as an
important piece of work.
1t is rarely that one comes across a
more astute study of government than
Frank Exline's volume on Politics" Mr.
Exline analyses keenly the framework of
all political systems, and concludes that in
the past all governments have failed be-
cause they have been lacking in organs as
necessary for their success as is the eye
or the ear for the proper functioning of
the human body. Instead of being estab-
lished upon scientific principles and regu-
lated by natural laws of justice, all gov
ernments have in the past been managed
according to the mere volition or caprice of
the rulers: and whether those rulers have
been autocrats or whether they have been
the masses of the people. the results have
been equally disastrous. for~reason has in
every case been Stunned, individual whims
and prejudices have guided the helm of
state, and individual merit has been a far
less important element in the choice of
leaders than popularity. wealth or freaks
of chance. Democracy, declares Mr.. Exline,
is to be indicted along with all other forms
of government; ain so far as 1t exists in
fact, it is anarchy; in so far as it exists
only in name but not in fact, 1t is a mere
illusion; as a form of government, it is
impossible. The people themselves
desire neither democracy nor popular
sovereignty; they desire efficient, wise and
just government. and they would welcome
the Inauguration of any practical method
by which the efficient, wise or just men
of the State could be discovered and in
stalled in the offices of government"
But how is such a system to be estab-
nshed? First of all, we must add a fourth
division of government-a division more
important either than the legislative, the
judicial, or the executive-a division lacked
by all governments in the past. and re-
sponsible through it's absence for the uni
versal failure of political systems. That
division is what the author terms the
selectiue branch of government, a branch