The American Commonwealth. Viscount James Bryce

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СКАЧАТЬ as Moulding Public Opinion

       81 Classes as Influencing Opinion

       82 Local Types of Opinion—East, West, and South

       83 The Action of Public Opinion

       84 The Tyranny of the Majority

       85 The Fatalism of the Multitude

       86 Wherein Public Opinion Fails

       87 Wherein Public Opinion Succeeds

       PART V

       Illustrations and Reflections

       88 The Tammany Ring in New York City

       89 The Philadelphia Gas Ring

       90 Kearneyism in California

       Epilogue to This and the Two Last Preceding Chapters

       91 The Home of the Nation

       92 The Latest Phase of Immigration

       93 The South Since the War

       94 Present and Future of the Negro

       95 Further Reflections on the Negro Problem

       96 Foreign Policy and Territorial Extension

       97 The New Transmarine Dominions

       98 Laissez Faire

       99 Woman Suffrage

       100 The Supposed Faults of Democracy

       101 The True Faults of American Democracy

       102 The Strength of American Democracy

       103 How Far American Experience Is Available for Europe

       PART VI

       Social Institutions

       104 The Bar

       105 The Bench

       106 Railroads

       107 Wall Street

       108 The Universities and Colleges

       109 Further Observations on the Universities

       110 The Churches and the Clergy

       111 The Influence of Religion

       112 The Position of Women

       113 Equality

       114 The Influence of Democracy on Thought

       115 Creative Intellectual Power

       116 The Relation of the United States to Europe

       117 The Absence of a Capital

       118 American Oratory

       119 The Pleasantness of American Life

       120 The Uniformity of American Life

       121 The Temper of the West

       122 The Future of Political Institutions

       123 Social and Economic Future

       Appendix I

       Explanation (by Mr. G. Bradford) of the Nominating Machinery and Its Procedure in the State of Massachusetts

       Remarks by Mr. Denis Kearney on “Kearneyism in California”

       Appendix II

       “The Predictions of Hamilton and de Tocqueville,” by James Bryce

       Appendix III

       “Bryce’s American Commonwealth: A Review,” by Woodrow Wilson

       Appendix IV

       “Review of The American Commonwealth,” by Lord Acton

       Index

       Notes

Introduction

      He knew us better than we know ourselves, and he went about and among us and gave us the boon of his illuminating wisdom derived from the lessons of the past.

      Chief Justice William Howard Taft

      October 12, 1922

      James Bryce’s The American Commonwealth is a classic work, not only of American politics but of political science. Eschewing the theoretical depths of democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville had plumbed, and lacking the partisan purposes for which Alexander Hamilton and his colleagues had penned The Federalist, Bryce sought to capture the America of his time, to present “within reasonable compass, a full and clear view of the facts of today.” ¹ As Bryce’s biographer would later put it, The American Commonwealth “was a photograph taken and exhibited by a political philosopher, not a history, not a picture of what was, not an account of how it had come to be.” ² But, as with photographs that aspire to art, the more one studies Bryce’s snapshot of a long-vanished America, the more one sees.

      Bryce’s fascination with America began in earnest on his first visit to the United States in 1870. It is worth remembering that the country he first saw was only five years past the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and but a year after the first transcontinental railway had been completed; it would be another seven years before the last of the federal troops of Reconstruction were finally withdrawn from the South in 1877. The America of which Bryce first took note was a geographically sprawling society kept only loosely in touch by telegraph and newspapers—telephones and radios being still decades away.

      When The American Commonwealth appeared in 1888, America was the youngest nation in a world still defined by ancient orders. The British Empire bustled beneath Victoria’s scepter and Russia creaked beneath the feudal splendor of Tsar Alexander III. The devastation of the Great War and the loss of innocence it would bring was more than a quarter of a century away; Lenin was but a schoolboy of eighteen, and Hitler would not be born until 1889.

      The America of Bryce’s observations has long since passed; indeed, it was already gone by the time of his death in 1922. When he first published The American Commonwealth, the population of the entire country, then only thirty-eight states strong, was a mere sixty million; СКАЧАТЬ