CHAPTER 3
Is not uniformly favourable to liberty
Illustrations from Roman and French history
Equality naturally hostile to liberty
Love of democracy for authoritative regulation
Effects of the increase of State power—Taxation and liberty
Party system hastened the transformation
Some Suggested Remedies
Change in the Irish representation
Class representation—Its history and decline
Mill's suggestions for mitigating dangers of universal suffrage
Repudiated by modern Radicalism—The ‘fancy’ franchises
The Swiss Referendum—Its history and influence
Its recent adoption in the United States
Attempt to introduce it into Belgium
Belief that a low suffrage is naturally conservative
Extension of the power of committees—The American committee system
English parliamentary committees—Devolution
Proposal that Governments should only resign on a vote of want of confidence
Probability that democratic Parliaments will sink in power
Democratic local government—Success of English local government
Largely due to property qualifications
Almost all of them now abolished—Act of 1894
This is the more serious on account of the great increase in taxation
Increase of State Taxation in Europe—Its Causes
Military expenditure—Standing armies
Buckle's prediction of the decline of wars
The commercial spirit now favours territorial aggrandisement
Growing popularity of universal military service
Importance of the question to the English race
Conscription and universal suffrage connected
But the military system may come into collision with the parliamentary system
National education—Its social and political effects
Primary education assuming the character of secondary education
Reformatories and prison reform
Increased taxation due to increased State regulation—Herbert Spencer's views
Necessity for some extension of State control
Advantages of State action in some fields
Government credit—Enterprises remunerative to the State
Unremunerative forms of literature and art
Dangers of State regulation and subsidies
Change in the character of democracy since Joseph Hume
Motives that have led to State aggrandisement
Attempts to push it still further—The Manchester school repudiated
Tendency to throw all taxation on one class
Tocqueville and Young on English taxes in the eighteenth century