POPULAR CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT

THREE SCHOOLS OF OPINION IN THE UNITED STATES WITH

RESPECT TO BUDGET-MAKING

OUR conditions are essential to stable, effective democratic

government: (1) consciousness of common ideals and

purposes to be realized; (2) organization to secure these ends; (3) leadership, an essential to cooperation; (4) popular control to make the organization and leadership consistent with the conscious ideals and purposes of those who are served. The American people are moved by the highest ideals. They have developed a genius for organization. But in government they have purposely deprived themselves of responsible leadership and, consequently, have not developed an effective mechanism of control over leadership. In other words, the means for making popular control effective being lacking, leadership has been irresponsible and the government has not been popular.

The purpose of a mechanism of control over government is not to develop or to use power, but to regulate the development and use of power. In a democracy its purpose is to enable the people through their representatives to make their political engines and all the machinery of public service responsive to their will by controlling them in the same manner that the Allies controlled the merchant marine of the world during the war-to control the movements of the ship of state by controlling its fuel supply. The people having by a fundamental agreement entrusted control over the fuel supply to their representatives, these representatives, if there is to be popular control of government, must be able to require the captain of the ship to tell, in any degree of detail that may be desired, what he proposes to do as well as what he has been doing, how much coal and oil he needs to make port and, in case he has not used it in the manner prearranged, to refuse to provide more fuel till a new captain, deemed more trustworthy,

has been put at the helm. The American people are sailing a large fleet, comprising one flag ship and forty-eight smaller ships of state, to say nothing of some lesser craft, and the organization and mechanism of control over them, the process of enforcing responsibility upon the captain and crew of each, are of the utmost moment. The question of control over government is as important as "liberty" or "justice" or general welfare". It involves the vital interests and opportunities of every citizen.

Budget-making is a process in the operation of the mechanism of popular control over government. To repeat the muchquoted statement of Gladstone, the greatest mill-wright of democracy that the Anglo-Saxon race has produced: "Budgets are not merely affairs of arithmetic, but in a thousand ways go to the root of the prosperity of individuals, the relations of classes and the strength of Kingdoms." Budget-making is something which, if considered at all, must be integrated with that part of our moral philosophy which concerns itself with the interrelations of people and government. This is what gives to the subject its place in the literature of democracy.

There is a point of more than passing interest in the observation made by an East Indian philosopher while visiting America. Being asked about the attitude of his people toward British rule, he said:

The British do the rough work of government very well. They seem to like that sort of thing and we are glad to be rid of it. Other people gifted in the art of organization have come down upon India and taken over her public service. To some, we paid very dearly and got little in return. But the British-they are good servants; they are courteous; and on the whole they have proved to be honest. They do the rough work of keeping order; they protect our borders from invaders; they carry the mail and parcels; they build and repair our roads, clean our streets and do a lot of other useful things, so that we are free to do pretty much as we choose.

Kipling, in his White Man's Burden, has stated the British imperial theory of the service rendered to dependent peoples. The East Indian's idea of freedom was that he had a white man

working for him. It differs radically from ours in one respect, but is quite consistent with it in another. The idea that government exists to serve is a fundamental principle of democracy. The individual member of a democratic society is usually glad enough to be rid of "the rough work" of satisfying those wants which common necessity and convenience create,-glad to be rid of the need of carrying a gun and of bearing the burdens incident to life in a primitive state of society in which each man or family stands alone as an isolated protective and producing unit. He is glad to avail himself of the benefits of broader and still broader cooperation made possible through a well ordered and highly developed and centralized public service, provided this is subservient to public opinion-to the will of the majority.

ment.

But democracy has no sympathy with or interest in any philosophy which stops short of popular control over governIt insists upon political as well as individual freedom. It conceives that without the right of group self-determination, individual liberty has no guarantee; that members of the group have the right to organize and decide what laws they shall have for the regulation of their conduct, so that each may have equal opportunity, and each may enjoy the full benefit of association; that members have a right to settle among themselves which services or activities shall be left to individual initiative and which shall be organized and conducted in common. These are matters to be determined by "common" sense and not by a benevolent paternalism.

When an American takes off his hat to the Flag, whether he stands alone in a foreign land or before an armed force that has the power to overthrow a kingdom, he does so neither in token of servitude nor with a feeling of superiority to public service, but as a mark of respect for the power and sovereignty of the people, for the majesty of a self-governing society of a hundred million citizens of which he is a member. He does so as a token of loyalty to his countrymen, who, conscious of their interdependence as well as their strength, and bound together by common ideals and purposes under a constitution of permanent union, are ready to respond as a group with all

the might that is in them, if need be, to any appeal or impulse which inspires common action. To Americans, government is their own creature, their own means of giving expression to a dominant national will, and to them the idea of its thwarting that will is intolerable. It is of the essence of democracy to insist on popular control over governmental agents, by peaceful means if possible, by violence if need be.

Democracy must possess and control all of the organized means of protecting its interests as it understands them. In other words, the people themselves must be the master. When, therefore, those who are employed or who by self-appointment undertake to do "the rough work" of rendering common service, incur the displeasure and lose the confidence of those whom they serve, it is time to change servants; and if those who are in possession of the implements and institutions of service use these resources to fortify themselves and remove themselves from popular control, democracy claims the right to tear down such part of their institutions, public and private, as give them shelter, to enable the people to put an end to practices hostile to concepts of justice. This is the right of control by revolution-the fundamental doctrine of the Declaration of Independence.

But democracy does not stop here. Revolution, though justifiable under circumstances such as are described in the Declaration, is tyrannical and wasteful. The only useful thing about it is the social impulse which it serves. The highest welfare of the people depends on discovering some method of control which will not require them to tear down their house in order to oust their servants. The author of the Declaration did not stop in his thinking about democracy with a formulation of the right of revolution. Just twenty-five years after the Declaration was signed, lacking three months, on the fourth of March, 1801, Jefferson put forth another declaration of principles which, in his opinion, would, if applied, make revolution unnecessary. Independence had then been won and no foreign foe threatened; a constitution of perpetual union had been adopted; a new house of their own design had been built by the people to live in; and for twelve years the same servants

had been employed to run it. But in this new house there had been trouble between the servants and the members of the household. Many of the latter complained that the former were seeking to free themselves from control. There was growing discontent among the people, bordering on revolt.

When in 1801, Jefferson, apostle and prophet of democracy, addressed his fellow countrymen, he was protesting against the aristocratic tendencies of the federal government; at the same time he urged the preservation, "in its whole constitutional vigor" and "as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad", of that government which had been set up by the fathers "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity." To make sure that this should be preserved, he laid down in his first inaugural address what he understood to be the principles of democracy, among which were these: (1) “A jealous care of the right of election by the people-a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;" (2) "absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force;" (3) "the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason". Another principle, not listed by him, was implied in the concluding paragraph of the address: "Relying, then, on the patronage of your goodwill, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make."

Jefferson's mind was not analytical, nor did he have Gladstone's faculty for making institutional adjustments, but he was gifted with clear vision and sound instinct in things democratic, and in enumerating what he believed to be the fundamentals of democracy, he included the four principles which have subsequently been adopted and enlarged upon, recognizing them as essential to an effective mechanism of popular control over govThese essentials may be expressed as: (1) popular election; (2) acceptance of the judgment of the majority as a

ernment.