The most notable point of difference between the English and continental administrative systems at the end of the eighteenth century was probably the relation which they bore to the judiciary. The English administrative system was characterized by its subjection to the control of the courts. The continental administrative system, as seen particularly in that of France, was marked by its freedom from judicial control.

The retention by each system' of its characteristic feature may have been due to the conscious desire to secure judicial control or administrative independence, as the case might be. And yet the origin of the difference between the two systems is hardly to be attributed to any well-defined theory of government, but rather to a course of political development of which the leaders of political thought were in all probability not fully conscious. Thus, in England, the jurisdiction of the courts, to whose exercise the judicial control was due, was developed at a time when no clear distinction was made between judicial and administrative authorities, when the royal courts occupied toward the chief of administration, the crown, a position similar to that of all other governmental authorities, when the judges were like other officers subject to the disciplinary power of the crown, which might remove them from office at any time and bring pressure to bear upon them to secure decisions favorable to the royal interests. The development of a wide jurisdiction in the courts, under such circumstances, did not involve a subjection of administrative action to a control exercised by bodies independent of the administration. For the crown could prevent the rendering of decisions unfavorable to its interests. The crown did not, therefore, try to limit the jurisdiction of the royal courts, but permitted them to exercise such powers as ultimately made them the highest and last instance of control over almost all governmental action.

During the past century great progress has been made in international law along two lines: (1) in the extension of the practice of international arbitration, and (2) in the development of a clearer conception of the rights and duties of neutrals. Both movements tend toward peace, the one in avoiding war by the judicial determination of the matter in dispute, and the other in limiting the area of warlike operations after war has actually been declared and in restricting hostilities to the original parties to the dispute. The Hague Peace Conference of 1899 marked the formal adoption by the nations of the earth of the principle of arbitration of certain classes of disputes, but this conference felt that its work was incomplete so long as there was such wide divergence of opinion as to the rights and duties of neutrals. Before adjournment, therefore, a resolution, was passed expressing the hope that this subject might be taken under consideration by a second conference in the near future. In President Roosevelt's proposal for a second conference, issued by Secretary Hay, October 21, 1904, this is one of the three subjects suggested for consideration, and special attention is called to one aspect of it, namely, “the treatment due to refugee belligerent ships in neutral ports.” This aspect of the subject derives special importance from the events of the Russo-Japanese War, and it is to this aspect of the subject that this discussion will be directed.

Among the many remarkable voltefaces in the history of international relations, none is perhaps more interesting in itself or destined to be more far-reaching in its ultimate effects on the future of civilization than the changed attitude towards each other of the peoples and governments of England and the United States during recent years. Only a decade ago our people, almost to a man, were roused to a frenzy of patriotic fervor by President Cleveland's startling message of December, 1895, threatening England with war unless she consented to submit a boundary dispute between herself and Venezuela to arbitration. It then seemed as if the spirit of hatred and suspicion against England transmitted to us by our forefathers would never die out. This spirit had been kept alive after the wars of the Revolution and of 1812 by a variety of real and imaginary grievances, including trade rivalries and boundary disputes, and it was again renewed during and after the Civil War as a result, among other things, of the Trent Affair and the Alabama and Behring Sea controversies.

Public international law has been sarcastically defined as “a compound of ethics, etiquette, and fraud, administered by armies and navies.” If in England and the United States it has ever worn such an appearance, this belied what with them is its real character. Their all-embracing common law has made both public and private international law a part of itself, to be administered, precisely as municipal law is, by the courts whenever a question turning upon their acknowledged rules may come up for judicial determination.

For the first time in our history America is face to face with a struggle for democracy—political, industrial, social. The issue is most clearly expressed in our cities. It is coming to the front in a number of commonwealths. It is severing party ties and forecasting a new political alignment. The new democracy is laying its foundations for a permanent home. It is adopting measures for the permanence of its control. These measures are direct legislation through the initiative and referendum, direct primaries, and municipal home rule. These are the political agencies sought.

Municipal ownership is but an industrial expression of democracy.

And the question is not so much, Do we believe in municipal ownership ? The question is: Do we believe in democracy? Do we really want a government of the people, with all of its possibilities of good and evil ? A government gradually broadening the significance of liberty, beyond the purely personal relations of the early Bills of Rights? And in passing on the achievements of democracy, it is necessary to bear in mind that we nowhere have a representative government. Democracy enjoys only so much liberty as privilege permits to it. Its ideals enter legislation only in so far as those ideals do not conflict with big business. Democracy has been drugged by business interests which are constantly struggling for its control. Even in those cities where the greatest achievements have been made, the community has been divided like an armed camp, and its energy devoted to self-protection rather than to the accomplishment of a definite program.

The present is in many respects an opportune moment to enlist recruits under the banner of municipalization. The many recent exposures of criminal conspiracies of corporation managers and promoters who have long masqueraded as business men have fairly whetted the public appetite for municipal experimentation. Moreover, one must be peculiarly slow of heart not to perceive that the air just now is vibrant with keen hopes of restoring to our democracy in city and state something of its original vigor. Among the exponents of this wholesome political reaction are found many who advocate municipal ownership and operation as the surest means of purifying our municipal politics. Whereas the plea for municipalization was formerly based on the ground of protecting the citizen's pocket, it is now urged as the only adequate guarantee of honesty in city politics. I desire merely to point out in passing that this plan of driving private corporations entirely out of city politics by entrusting to the city the direct administration of public service enterprises is a remedy whose logical application reaches far beyond the municipal domain. The possible betrayal of the public interest is not confined to the corrupt grants of franchises by city governments. Not a tariff measure is framed by Congress, not an appropriation bill is passed, not a contract awarded by federal, state, or local governments where the same possibility of evil does not lurk. A consistent extension of this doctrine would charge these branches of the government with an infinity of industrial tasks, to preclude the chance that they may violate their trusts at the instigation of dishonest corporations.

A noted writer on political subjects, Woodrow Wilson, says in his Congressional Government: “Before the Republican reaction which followed the supremacy of the Federalists, the heads of the departments appeared in person before the Houses to impart desired information, and to make what suggestions they might have to venture, just as the President appeared in person to read his ‘address.’” This statement is one of a large number afloat, which assume that executive officers at one time enjoyed the privilege of speaking on the floors of Congress. Inasmuch as the basis of this impression is a few occurrences indistinctly recorded and still more vaguely cited, it may be worth while to discover from the sources whether they bear out any such view of the early practices of the government.

The occurrences which give color to such an impression may be divided into two groups. Into the first fall three transactions, in which there is no doubt that certain high Executive officers participated in person. The second includes a class of events, of which there are at least twenty, where the real significance of the thing that happened is not so clear on the surface.

One of the ill effects of a century of sectional controversy over the status of the negro is that every privilege to which his name is attached is at once seized upon by both sides as something abnormal. “Negro suffrage,” for instance, probably seems to most people a modern, novel and unusual practice, which requires some kind of special justification. The truth is that, though there were plently of restrictions upon the suffrage from the earliest colonial times to the present day, those founded on race came in late, slowly, and in some communities not at all. The original American idea of the suffrage was that it was to be exercised only by the better class of the community, in Massachusetts and in Connecticut by members of the Congregational Church; in other colonies, by people owning real estate or paying a property tax or both. Most of the colonies were constantly being increased by a class of white people who came over as indentured servants with an obligation to serve for a term of years, and were ineligible for the suffrage. But those people served out their terms, acquired property, founded families, and came into the restricted political community. The free negroes as they came along were put on just the same footing, if they had the energy, thrift and fortune to get together the necessary property.

To this general principle, previous to the Revolution, there were two half exceptions and two complete ones. North Carolina from 1715 to 1734 and Virginia from 1723 to 1733 restricted the suffrage, but the British government objected on the ground that “it cannot be right to strip all persons of a black complexion from those rights which are so justly valuable to any free man.” South Carolina, where the negroes became more numerous than the whites, took away the suffrage in 1716 and never restored it,—an example followed by Georgia in 1761. Those two states repeated the disqualification in their revolutionary constitutions, but it was fifteen years before any others of the Southern States thought it necessary. During the Revolution some thousand of negroes were enlisted in the Continental and State armies; those of them who were slaves were set free, and it was not a time when people were disposed to take away a privilege hedged about with such difficulties that probably not one-third of the adult white men could vote.

The question of negro suffrage is not one to be determined by agreement between the whites of the North and the whites of the South; it is a matter for the blacks themselves to settle. Most discussions of the subject assume that the opportunity to vote is to be conceded to the negro, if at all, by the Southern whites upon the demand of the outraged North. Not so. “Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.” After the close of the war the North, driven by the necessities of the situation, placed the ballot in the negro's unpractised hands for the purpose of protecting him against re-enslavement. That purpose has been fulfilled. The ruling whites have been occupied in intimidating him at the polls and counting out his vote, and have, in consequence, been unable to make headway with the purpose (which was evident among them at the close of the war) to shackle him afresh so soon as the power of the North should be withdrawn.

But the ex-slave, unused to directing his own actions and incapable of coping with his old masters, could not retain possession of the weapon that the North had thrust into his hands; still less could he use it for his own advancement in civilization. Of what use would it be, then, once more to confer upon him this gift at present?