CHAPTER XLII

THE STATE

329. =The State and Its Sovereignty.=—The various economic and social functions that are exercised by the people as a nation can be performed in an orderly and effective way only when the people are organized politically, and the nation has full powers of sovereignty. When the nation functions politically it is a state. States may be large like Russia, or small like Montenegro; they may have full sovereignty like Great Britain, or limited sovereignty like New York; the fact that they exercise political authority makes them states. It is conceivable that this political authority may be exercised through the sheer force of public opinion, but the experience of the newly organized United States under the Articles of Confederation showed that national moral suasion was not effective. History seems to prove that society needs a machinery of government able to legislate and enforce its laws, and the tendency has been for a comparatively small number of states to extend their authority over more and more of the earth's surface. This has become possible through the maintenance of efficient military forces and wise local administration, aided by increasing ease of communication and transportation. Once it was a question whether the United States could enforce its law as far away as western Pennsylvania; now Great Britain bears unquestioned sway over the antipodes. Many persons look forward to the time when the people of all nations will unite in a universal state, with power to enforce its will without resort to war.

330. =Why the State is Necessary.=—There are some persons, commonly known as anarchists, who do not believe that government is necessary. They would have human relations reduced to their lowest terms, and then trust to human nature to behave itself properly. There are other persons known as Socialists, who would have the people in their collective capacity exercise a larger control than now over human action. Neither of these classes represents the bulk of society. Common sense and experience together seem to demand a government that will exercise a reasonable control, and by reasonable is meant a control that will preserve the best interests of all and make general progress possible. The political function of the nation is both coercive and directive. When we think of a state we naturally think of the power that it possesses to make peace or war with foreign powers, to keep order within the nation, to enforce its authority over any individual or group that breaks the laws that it has made; but while such power of control is essential and its exercise often spectacular, it is paralleled by the directive power. There are many social relations that need definition and much social conduct that needs direction. A man and a woman live together and bring up a family of children. Who is to determine their legal status, the terms of marriage, the rights of parenthood, the claims of childhood, the rights and obligations of the family as a part of the community? The family accumulates property in lands, houses, and movable possessions. Who will make the acquisition legal, insure property protection, and provide legally for inheritance? Every individual has his personal relation to the state, and privileges of citizenship are important. Who shall determine the right to vote and to hold office, or the duty to pay taxes or serve in the army or navy? In these various ways the state is no less functioning politically for the benefit of the people than when coercing recalcitrant citizens, warning or fighting other nations, or legislating in its congressional halls. Its opportunity to regulate the social interests of its citizens is almost illimitable, for while a written constitution may prescribe what a state may and may not do, those who made the constitution have the power to revise it or to override its provisions.

331. =Theories of the State.=—Archaeological and historical evidence point to the family as the nursery of the state. There was a time when the contract theory was popular. It was believed that the state became possible when individuals agreed to give up some of their own individual rights for the sake of living in peace with their neighbors and enjoying mutual protection. There is no doubt that such a mutual arrangement was made in the troublous feudal period of mediaeval European history, just as the original thirteen American colonies gave up some of their individual powers to make possible a real American state, but the social-contract theory is no longer accepted as a satisfactory explanation of the origin of government. There was no Mayflower compact with the bushmen when Englishmen decided to live with the natives in Australia.

There is another theory that eminently wise men, with or without divine assistance, formulated law and government for cities and tribes, and that their codes were definitely accepted by the people, but the work of these men, as far as it is historical at all, seems to have been a work of codifying laws which had grown out of custom rather than of making new laws. Still another theory that was once held strenuously by a few was that of the divine right of kings, as if God had given to one dynasty or one class the right to rule irresponsibly over their fellows. Individual political philosophers, like the Greek Aristotle and the German Bluntschli have published their theories, and have influenced schools of publicists, but the political science of the present day, basing its theories on observed facts, is content to trace the gradual changes that have taken place in the unconscious development of the past, and to point out the possibilities of intelligent progress in future evolution.

332. =How the State Came to Be.=—The true story of the development of the state seems to have been as follows. The roots of the state are in the family group. When the family expanded into the tribe, family discipline and family custom easily passed over to tribal discipline and tribal custom, strengthened by religious superstition and the will of the priest. But not all chieftains and all tribes have the same ability or the same disposition, so that while political custom and religious sanctions tended in the main to remain unchanged, an occasional exception upset the social equilibrium. Race mixture and conflicting interests compelled organization on a civil rather than a tribal basis. Or an ambitious prince or a restless tribe interfered with the established relations, and presently a powerful military state was giving law to subjugated tribes. Egypt, Persia, Rome, Turkey have been such states. On a larger scale, something of the same sort has happened in the conquest of outlying parts of the world by the European Powers, until one man in Petrograd can give law to Kamchatka, a cabinet in London can determine a policy for the government of India, or the United States Congress can change the administration of affairs in the Philippines. Military power has been the weapon by which authority has been imposed from without, legislative action the instrument by which authority has been extended within.

333. =The Government of Great Britain.=—The government of Great Britain is one of the best concrete examples of the growth of a typical state. Its Teutonic founders learned the rudiments of government in the German forests, where the principles of democracy took root. Military and political exigencies gave the prince large power, but the people never forgot how to exert their influence through local assembly or national council. In the thirteenth century, when the King displeased the men of the nation, they demanded the privileges of Magna Carta, and when King and lords ruled inefficiently, the common people found a way to enlarge their own powers. Representatives of the townsmen and the country shires took their places in Parliament, and gradually, with growing wisdom and courage, assumed more and more prerogatives. Three times in the seventeenth century Parliament demanded successfully certain rights of citizenship, though once it had to fight and once more to depose a king. In the nineteenth century, by a succession of reform acts, King and Parliament admitted tradesmen, farmers, and working men to a full share in the workings of the state, and only recently the Commons have supplanted the Lords as the leading legislative body of the nation. The story of Great Britain is a tale of growing democracy and increasing efficiency.

The story of local government and the story of imperial government might be placed side by side with the story of national government, and each would reveal the political principles that have guided British progress. Social need, patient experiment, and growth in efficiency are significant phrases that help to explain the story. Every nation has worked out its government in its own way, interfered with occasionally by interested parties on the outside, but the general line of progress has been the same—local experimentation, federation or union more often imposed than agreed upon by popular consent, and a slow growth of popular rights over government by a privileged few. Present tendency is in the direction of safeguarding the interests of all by a fully representative government, in which the individual efficiency of prince or commoner alike shall have due weight, but no one sovereign or class shall rule the people as a whole.

334. =The Organization of Government.=—The political organization depends upon the functions that the state has to perform, as the structure of any group corresponds to its functions. The modern national machinery is a complicated system, and is becoming more so as constitutional conventions define more in detail the powers and forms of government, and as legislatures enter the field of social reform, but the simplest attempt at regulation involves several steps, and so naturally there are several departments of government. The first step is the election of those who are to make the laws. Practically all modern states recognize the principle that the people are at least to have a share in government; this is managed by the popular election of their representatives in the various departments of government. The second step is lawmaking by the representative legislature, congress, or parliament, usually after previous deliberation and recommendation by a committee; in some states the people have the right by referendum to ratify or reject the legislation, and even to initiate such legislation as they desire. The third step is the arrangement for carrying out the law that has been passed. This is managed by the executive department of the government. The fourth step is the actual administration of law and government by officials who are sometimes elected and sometimes appointed, and who constitute the administrative department of the political organization. A fifth step is the passing upon law and the relation of an individual or group to it by judicial officers attached to a system of courts. These departments of the state, with whatever auxiliary machinery has been organized to assist in their working, make up the political organization of the typical modern state.

335. =The Electoral System.=—There is great variety in the degree of self-government enjoyed by the people. In the most advanced nations the electoral privileges are widely distributed, in the backward nations it is only recently that the people have had any voice in national affairs. Usually suffrage is reserved for those who have reached adult manhood, but an increasing number of States of the American Union and several foreign nations have admitted women to equal privileges. Lack of property or education in many countries is a bar to electoral privilege. Pauperism and crime and sometimes religious heterodoxy disfranchise. The variety and number of officials to be elected varies greatly. The head of the nation in the states of the Old World generally holds his position by hereditary right, and he has large appointive power directly or indirectly. In some states the judiciary is appointed rather than elected on the ground that it should be above the influence of party politics. The chief power of the people is in choosing their representatives to make the laws. Most of these representatives are chosen for short terms and must answer to the people for their political conduct; by these means the people are actually self-governing, though the execution of the law may be in the hands of officers whom they have not chosen. Democratic government is nevertheless subject to all the forces that affect large bodies exerted through party organizations, demagogues, and a party press, but even opponents of democracy are willing to admit that the people are learning political lessons by experience.

336. =The Legislative System.=—Legislation by representatives of all classes of the people is a new political phenomenon tried out most thoroughly among the large nations by Great Britain, France, and the United States. Even now there is much distrust of the ability of the ordinary man in politics, and considerably more of the ordinary woman. But there have been so many extraordinary individuals who have risen to political eminence from the common crowd, that the legislative privilege can no longer be confined to an aristocracy. The old aristocratic element is represented to-day by a senate, or upper house, composed of men who are prominent by reason of birth, wealth, or position, but the upper house is of minor importance. The real legislative power rests with the lower chamber, which directly represents the middle and lower classes, professional, business, and industrial. The action of lawmaking bodies is usually limited in scope by the provisions of a written constitution, and is modified by the public opinion of constituents. Important among the necessary legislation is the regulation of the economic and social relations of individuals and corporations, provision for an adequate revenue by means of a system of taxation, appropriation for the maintenance of departments of government and necessary public works, and the determination of an international policy. In the United States an elaborate system of checks and balances gives the executive a provisional veto on legislation, but gives large advisory powers to Congress. In Great Britain the executive is the chief of the dominant party in Parliament, and if he loses the confidence of the legislative body he loses his position as prime minister unless sustained in a national election.

In all legislative bodies there are inevitable differences of opinion and conflicts of interests resulting in party divisions and such opposite groups as conservatives and radicals. The formulation and pursuance of a national policy is, therefore, not an easy task, and the conflict of interests often necessitates compromise, so that a history of legislation over a series of years shows that national progress is generally accomplished by liberalism wresting a modicum of power from conservatism, then giving way for a little to a period of reaction, and then pushing forward a step further as public opinion becomes more intelligent or more courageous.

337. =The Executive Department.=—Legislative bodies occasionally take vacations; the executive is always on duty in person or through his subordinates. Popularly considered, the executive department of government consists of the president, the king, or the prime minister; actually it includes an advisory council or cabinet, which is responsible to its chief, but shares with him the task of the management of national affairs. The executive department of the government stands in relation to the people of the nation as the business manager of a corporation stands in relation to the stockholders. He must see that the will of the people, as expressed by their representatives, is carried into effect; he must appoint the necessary administrative officials for efficient service; he must keep his finger upon the pulse of the nation, and use his influence to hold the legislature to its duty; he must approve or veto laws which are sent to him to sign; above all, he must represent his nation in all its foreign relations, appoint the personnel of the diplomatic force, negotiate treaties, and help to form the international law of the world. It is the business of the executive to maintain the honor and dignity of the nation before the world, and to carry out the law of his own nation if it requires the whole military force available.

338. =Administrative Organization.=—The executive department includes the advisers of the head, who constitute the cabinet. In Europe the cabinet is responsible to the sovereign or the parliament, and the members usually act unitedly. In the United States they are appointed by the President, and are individually responsible to him alone. In their capacity as a cabinet they help to formulate national policy, and their influence in legislation and in moulding public opinion is considerable, but their chief function is in administering the departments of which they have charge. It is the custom for the heads of the chief departments of government to constitute the cabinet, but their number differs in different states, and titles vary, also. In general, the department of state or foreign affairs ranks first in importance, and its secretary is in charge of all correspondence with the diplomatic representatives of the nation located in the world's capitals; the department of the treasury or the exchequer is usually next in importance; others are the departments of the army and navy, of colonial possessions, of manufacturing and commerce, mining, or agriculture, of public utilities, of education or religion, and for judicial business. Each of these has its subordinate bureaus and an army of civil-service officials, some of whom owe their appointment to personal influence, others to real ability. The civil officials with which the public is most familiar are postal employees, officers of the federal courts, and revenue officials. Such persons usually hold office while their party is in power or during good behavior. Long tenure of office tends to conservative measures and the spirit of bureaucracy, while a system by which civil office is regarded as party spoil tends to corruption and inefficiency. The business of administration is becoming increasingly important in the modern state.

339. =The Judicial System.=—There is always danger that law may be misinterpreted or prove unconstitutional. It is the function of the judicial department of government to make decisions, interpreting and applying the law of the nation in particular cases brought before the courts. The law of the nation is superior to all local or sectional law; so is the national judiciary supreme in its authority and national in its jurisdiction. The judicial system of the United States includes a series of courts from the lowest district courts, which are located throughout the country, to the Supreme Court in Washington, which deals with the most momentous questions of national law. In the United States the judicial system is complicated by a system of lesser courts, State and local, independent of federal control, attached to which is a body of police, numerous judges, juries, and lawyers; the higher courts also have their justices and practising lawyers, but there is less haste and confusion and greater dignity and ability displayed. There has been much criticism in recent years of antiquated forms of procedure, cumbrous precedent, and unfair use of technicalities for the defeat of justice, but however imperfect judicial practice may be, the system is well intrenched and is not likely to be changed materially.

340. =The Relation of National to District Governments.=—In some nations there are survivals of older political divisions which once possessed sovereignty, but which have sacrificed most, if not all, of it for the larger good. This is the case in such federal states as the German Empire, Switzerland, and the United States. Each State in the American nation retains its own departments of government, and so has its governor and heads of departments, its two-chambered legislature, and its State judiciary. State law and State courts are more familiar to the people than most of the national legislation. In the German Empire each state has its own prince, and in many respects is self-governing, but has been more and more sinking its own individuality in the empire. In the British Empire there is still another relation. England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were once independent of each other, but military and dynastic events united them. For local legislation and administration they tend to separate, and already Ireland has obtained home rule. Beyond seas a colonial empire has arisen, and certain great dominions are united by little more than ties of blood and loyalty to the mother country. Canada, Australia, and South Africa have gained a larger measure of sovereignty. India is held as an imperial possession, but even there experiments of self-government are being tried. The whole tendency of government, both here and abroad, seems to be to leave matters of local concern largely to the local community and matters that belong to a section or subordinate state to that district, and to centralize all matters of national or interstate concern in the hands of a small body of men at the national capital. In every case national or imperial authority is the court of last resort.

READING REFERENCES

BLISS: New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, art. "Anarchism."

DEALEY: Development of the State, pages 127-234.

WILSON: The State, pages 555-571.

BLUNTSCHLI: Theory of the State, pages 61-73.

Constitution of the United States.

BRYCE: The American Commonwealth (abridged edition), pages 22-242, 287-305.