The early years of the World Republic witnessed a certain recrudescence
of political adventure. There was, it is rather curious to note, no
revival of separatism after the face of King Ferdinand Charles had
vanished from the sight of men, but in a number of countries, as the
first urgent physical needs were met, there appeared a variety of
personalities having this in common, that they sought to revive
political trouble and clamber by its aid to positions of importance and
satisfaction. In no case did they speak in the name of kings, and it is
clear that monarchy must have been far gone in obsolescence before the
twentieth century began, but they made appeals to the large survivals
of nationalist and racial feeling that were everywhere to be found,
they alleged with considerable justice that the council was overriding
racial and national customs and disregarding religious rules. The great
plain of India was particularly prolific in such agitators. The revival
of newspapers, which had largely ceased during the terrible year
because of the dislocation of the coinage, gave a vehicle and a method
of organisation to these complaints. At first the council disregarded
this developing opposition, and then it recognised it with an entirely
devastating frankness.
Never, of course, had there been so provisional a government. It was of
an extravagant illegality. It was, indeed, hardly more than a club, a
club of about a hundred persons. At the outset there were ninety-three,
and these were increased afterwards by the issue of invitations which
more than balanced its deaths, to as many at one time as one hundred
and nineteen. Always its constitution has been miscellaneous. At no
time were these invitations issued with an admission that they
recognised a right. The old institution or monarchy had come out
unexpectedly well in the light of the new _régime_. Nine of the
original members of the first government were crowned heads who had
resigned their separate sovereignty, and at no time afterwards did the
number of its royal members sink below six. In their case there was
perhaps a kind of attenuated claim to rule, but except for them and the
still more infinitesimal pretensions of one or two ex-presidents of
republics, no member of the council had even the shade of a right to
his participation in its power. It was natural, therefore, that its
opponents should find a common ground in a clamour for representative
government, and build high hopes upon a return, to parliamentary
institutions.
The council decided to give them everything they wanted, but in a form
that suited ill with their aspirations. It became at one stroke a
representative body. It became, indeed, magnificently representative.
It became so representative that the politicians were drowned in a
deluge of votes. Every adult of either sex from pole to pole was given
a vote, and the world was divided into ten constituencies, which voted
on the same day by means of a simple modification of the world post.
Membership of the government, it was decided, must be for life, save in
the exceptional case of a recall; but the elections, which were held
quinquennially, were arranged to add fifty members on each occasion.
The method of proportional representation with one transferable vote
was adopted, and the voter might also write upon his voting paper in a
specially marked space, the name of any of his representatives that he
wished to recall. A ruler was recallable by as many votes as the quota
by which he had been elected, and the original members by as many votes
in any constituency as the returning quotas in the first election.
Upon these conditions the council submitted itself very cheerfully to
the suffrages of the world. None of its members were recalled, and its
fifty new associates, which included twenty-seven which it had seen fit
to recommend, were of an altogether too miscellaneous quality to
disturb the broad trend of its policy. Its freedom from rules or
formalities prevented any obstructive proceedings, and when one of the
two newly arrived Home Rule members for India sought for information
how to bring in a bill, they learnt simply that bills were not brought
in. They asked for the speaker, and were privileged to hear much ripe
wisdom from the ex-king Egbert, who was now consciously among the
seniors of the gathering. Thereafter they were baffled men....
But already by that time the work of the council was drawing to an end.
It was concerned not so much for the continuation of its construction
as for the preservation of its accomplished work from the dramatic
instincts of the politician.
The life of the race becomes indeed more and more independent of the
formal government. The council, in its opening phase, was heroic in
spirit; a dragon-slaying body, it slashed out of existence a vast,
knotted tangle of obsolete ideas and clumsy and jealous
proprietorships; it secured by a noble system of institutional
precautions, freedom of inquiry, freedom of criticism, free
communications, a common basis of education and understanding, and
freedom from economic oppression. With that its creative task was
accomplished. It became more and more an established security and less
and less an active intervention. There is nothing in our time to
correspond with the continual petty making and entangling of laws in an
atmosphere of contention that is perhaps the most perplexing aspect of
constitutional history in the nineteenth century. In that age they seem
to have been perpetually making laws when we should alter regulations.
The work of change which we delegate to these scientific committees of
specific general direction which have the special knowledge needed, and
which are themselves dominated by the broad intellectual process of the
community, was in those days inextricably mixed up with legislation.
They fought over the details; we should as soon think of fighting over
the arrangement of the parts of a machine. We know nowadays that such
things go on best within laws, as life goes on between earth and sky.
And so it is that government gathers now for a day or so in each year
under the sunshine of Brissago when Saint Bruno’s lilies are in flower,
and does little more than bless the work of its committees. And even
these committees are less originative and more expressive of the
general thought than they were at first. It becomes difficult to mark
out the particular directive personalities of the world. Continually we
are less personal. Every good thought contributes now, and every able
brain falls within that informal and dispersed kingship which gathers
together into one purpose the energies of the race.