Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/563

 its evil effects. The over-estimate of the republican form of government based on classical commonplace has, among other things, prevented our knowing what may be said for or against its establishment in the older parts of the world. French republics have up to this time chiefly failed because too much was expected from them. If we look to facts for our guidance, we have few to rely upon except those furnished by the comparatively short history of the group of States making up the American Union. Now, the spectacle of the United States suggests not that a republican government is what it was deemed to be by most Englishmen in 1793, but that it is a government hardly worth the trouble of adopting in 1879. It is neither a Utopia of bliss nor a den of assassins and thieves, but simply a set of institutions like another, with advantages and drawbacks keeping the scales nearly evenly poised. The attractions which it had for thinkers of the once famous Utilitarian school plainly arose from miscalculation. They argued that the interests of a community were the interests of the greatest number of men in it; and that therefore every government which rested on the votes of this greatest number, and did not disturb their verdict by collateral influences, would be sure by the nature of the case to promote the true interest of the nation. It has turned out in practice that few men out of a community will give attention to the interests of the community, and that fewer still can see or understand them. Thus the experience of republican government in America has ended in a great deal of disillusion. It is not that men may not be happy and prosperous under republics, but that they are not happier or more prosperous than under many of the forms of monarchy. A people living under republican institutions is plainly not wiser, nor more virtuous, nor more peaceable for its government; nor is this government cheaper or less clumsy in its practical working than others. A certain amount of social ease and independence is attributed to American society by those who have observed it; but it does not appear to have any greater respect or regard for cultivation than the ordinary society of older countries. On the whole, if monarchy and republicanism come into competition, and the victory be decided by the results of experience, there is no particular reason why republicanism should prevail. The probability is, however, that, if the throne were to give place to the presidential chair in a country like ours, the substitution would not be caused by any deliberate preference for republican institutions, but by the aggregation of some or all of those drawbacks on monarchy which we have noticed until they have become intolerable.—Pall Mall Budget.