The Descent to a Dictatorship

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Part of The Lawyers Journal

Title: The Descent to a Dictatorship
Creator: Maxey, George W.
Language: English
Source: VIII (3) February 15, 1940
Year: 1940
Subject: Speeches, addresses, etc.; Dictatorship
Rights
Fulltext: -February 15, 1940 THE LAWYERS' JOURNAL 85 THE DESCENT TO A DICTATORSHIP* By GEORGE W. MAXEY [From VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY, Vol. IV, No. 24] J T is a haJ,>PY coincidence that the meeting that directly led to the Philadelphia C~nstitutional Convention was a meeting of the sepresentatives of five states held on September 11, 1786, in Maryland, and 152 years later almost to the exact date, news from Maryland demonstrated that the majol"ity of American voters ore still free men and that the United States is not yet ready to descend \ to a dictatorship. On September 11, 1786, the Maryland meeting was good news and on Se1)tember 12, 1938, the report of the Maryland vote was in a double sense "glad Tydings." The defense of constitutionnl gove1·nment rises above politics or partisanship and because of that faCt I feel justified in speaking here. "Easy is the descent into hell." That a dictatorship is hell is self-evident. Refugees who recently escaped from the German dicta.torship to the Swiss Republic knelt with a prayer of thanks and kissed the free soil. Not long ago the Russian dictator executed the Admiral of the Russian Navy, the Superintendent of the Russian Naval .<4.cademy and many others, and a little before that he did correspondiilg jobs on the army High Command. Stalin possesses the all-time Russian record for assassinations. ·He "has slain h~ tens of thousands." Germany is a cruel despotism. Jn both countries people are regimented by brutro,J bureaucracies, lied tQ by a controlled- radio and press, and convineed by bullets. Ship captains find it' unnecessary when their ships touch Russian or German ports to take precautions against desertions. Desertions are numerous only in the po1·ts of fr~e countries. Sailors have an unerring instinct for a 1 good lend. . In Russia and Germany there are 240,000,000 human beings living under terrorism. Hundreds of thousands of them are in prison camps. Fifty thousand Austrians have been imprisoned or exiled be· cause of their race. Chancehor Schuschf"' nigg fo to be tried for treason because he was Joyal to his own country. Many htn:e found in suicide the only escape from intoler'able tyranny. Jn Germany there is n secret tt,ibunal with sPies everywhere. When a German finds that this tribunal is making inquiries about him, it is said that "he puts ~ pistol to his head," no matter how blameless he may be. Defense is useless, for Hitler proclaims his belief in periodic Purges. Hitler's right~h~nd' man is "Iron ~i.v~;rs. d:'.'~:;·etheinau~:i~c.,;ro~f 14~~ ~nioS:Pt=:= Club or Chicago. He1'ma1111" Goering. He expressed his idea of his official duty when he 11aid: "I atn in the habit of shooting from time to time and if I sometimes mal{e mistakes, at least I have shot." This savage dictatorship has destroyed German freedom, made Germany medieval in its bar .. barism and today world peace is subject to the whim of a man who but fifteen years ago was a paper-hanger. It's too had be didn't remain one. The descent from the Germany of Bismarck and Von Bulow, of Rathenau and Stresemann to the Germany of Hitler and Goering has been s descent into harbarism. \ If the assaults being made on our ConstitUtion ai-e not emphs.tically repelled, this Republic will make the same descent. The German people wei:e warned against Hitler. They wei·e told. that this "cheap Austrian demagogue," ns he was then characterized, wou!d take away their liberties if he were entrusted with power. The warnings were ignored. Germans though.t "it could not hnppen" there. Von Hindenburg took Hitler so lightly six years ago that he said he would get rid of him by putting him t,o work licking the backs c.f Hindenburg postage stamps. Today the once despised demagogue holds in his hands the lives of 75,000,000 people and menaces the welfare of the world. Edmund Burke was right when he said that •·earlY and provident fear is the mother of safety." If the Germ9.ns had feared Hitler a little more when they had a chance to vote him out, they wouldn't have to fear him so much now when they have no chance to vote at all. The road descending to a dictatorship is an old,. one. Pinto and Aristotle described it twenty-three centuries ago. There is no mystery about the science of government. The greatest intellects have illumined that subject and all history confirms their conclusions. Aristotle said that a democrncy unrestrained by constitutional limitations was "a state in which everything, even the law, depended on the multitude set up as a tyrant ~nd governed by a few declamatorY. speakers." James Madison had the same thought in 1J787 when he described unrestrained· democracies as "spectacles pf turbulence, short in their lives and violent in their deaths." Human character is the stuff states are , made of and jt has never changed. The ambltions and vanities of men of today are a!! described in ancient literature. In Home;r's story of the Trojan Horse,. he told how the hostile Greeks got into Troy . by being conceal.ad in a dE;vice that appea.l'ed to be something other than what it w~s. If he were living today 1 and saw the devices used to introduce deadly evi~<> into this Republic, he would say the deceptiveness if the few and the gullibility of the many had not changed in 3,000 yeai;:>. Fortunately for us Americans those statesmen who met in Philadelphia 151 years ago knew human history, 1 human nature and the collclusions of all the political philosophers. John Locke's "Treatise on Government," and Montesquieu's "Spirit Of the Laws," declaring that the separation of governmental powers is the only sufeguarp against tyranny, were well known to these men. Madison and H'amilton and Wilson had studied the records 'o1 f all republics. Franklin_ was there and he was one of the wisest men of the ages. The convention's presiding officer was George Wa~hington, whom Gladstone pronounced, "the purest figure in history." Washington's life and character personify just resistance to the abuse of power. He 1 often declared: "Arbitrary, irresponsible ' power cannot be entrusted to human minds." These nation builders were practical men. None of them had ever learned tn walk by' being carried or sQught remune1·ation through indolence. Whatever they. possessed they had struggled for. They had liberty only bec&use they had fought for it. After the Revolution the need of the hour was ,government. Th;2re· are two kinds: autocmtic and democratic. Americans had ·fought off om:; autocratic government and did not want another. They wanted "a government of the pj!ople," and such a government means the :i:ule of nei· ther a man nor a mob. A free spiTit abhors both anarchy -and chains. ·Mindful of the lessons of the past, these men were cager to protect human liberty by ccinstitutional safeguards. Republics descend to dictatorships only when people forget the past and a1·e blind to the present ,and indiffere.Jlt to the' future. Na~oleon said that it was easier to make a plan of campaign than to execute it. Our Constitution was a plan of campaign C\gainst autocracy. The plan was executed successfully for nearly 150 years. If the plan is failing now, it is. because the American people have lost their capacity for self-government. Our constitutional guarantees become "poor, poor,.. dumb mouths" only when character no longer, stands behind them. T}ie plans of NapG' Jeon succeeded only when he had m~n with character tO e"Xecute them. His ~r· feet plan for the Battle .of Waterloo was wrecked by _ a single subordinate. 86 Nations have been ruined by one man 'Slone. Place "the government in the hands of a single individual and you endow him with unUmited capacity for evil, which he is likely to exercise. Proof of this is found in the European dictatorships of today. "A thousand years scarce serve to form a state, ' An hour may lay it in the dust; and when Can man its sho.tter'd splendor .renovate?" Our Constitution has been declared to be "the greatest document ever struck off at one time by the mind of man." Like all works of superior minds, it is not complex but simple. It has four basic principles, which until i·ecent years had the whole-hearted allegiance of evecy Arne~· ican statesman. No man ever takes official authority here without first making a solemn covenant with God and his country to be faithful to the fundamental Jaw. To take tliat oath and then attempt to undermine the fundamental law is not only perjury, it is treason.....::...treason to the most sacred trust human hands can hold. Infidelity to the Constitution is infidelity to freedom. Heretofore, however much political rivals in America might have differed on policies, they did not differ in their devotion to the fundamental law. In June, 1861, Stephen A. Douglas lay dying in this city. He and .Abraham Lincoln had been long-time rivals in the politics of Illinois and · recent rivals for the presidency. The defeated and dying Douglas, when asked by his 0 wife if he had a farewell message for his sons, said: "Yes, tell thQm to support the Constitution of the United States." What nre these four basic principles of the Constitution'! They are: (1) The federal government shall keep to its sphere and the states to their proper spheres of government. (2) No official shall be entrusted with autocratic power. (S) Unrestrained power shall never be lodged anywhere, not in the P~esident, not in the Congress, not even in a majority of the American people. (4) There shall b~ maintained an absolutely independent judiciary. In our constitutional system the United States Supreme Court is the "power of gravity" which holds to its assigned "orbit" every "planet" of government. 1 As long as these basic principles of the Constitution are unviolated, there can be no dictatorship. A certain sign of a dictatorship-complex in any public official i'> his scom of these principles. Within the past few years these principles of sound, de. mocratic government have been flouted in the "New Russia", the "New Germany", apd the ~'New Deal". The first act of the German dictator was to abolish home rule and to concentrate :i.11 power in • Berlin. In his first speech ns C11ance1lor in February, 1933, Hitler said the German provinces were "the historical cor· THE LAWYERS' JOURNAL · ner-stones of the German Empire," and he would respect them. Within a year ha broke that p!Cdge and appointed commissioners to rule the provinces. Thereafter local rights and then individual rights quickly disappeared. The federal republic 9f Germany had become a centralized autocracy. Insisting that he had done all this by legai means, Hitler called himself "Legality Adolf." Exactly five months after he h11.d centralized all authority in himself he' carried out his blood purge, murdering several hundred men and one woman. 1 These people were murdered because they were critical of Hitler's policies. Willi Schmidt, the Munich press chie~, was one of the victims. He had criticized Hitler. The gang of cXecutioners first shot the wrong 'Yilli Schmidt, a musician, and then discovering their mistp.ke, went back and shot the other. Thus two men were killed to get rid .of one critic. Another victim of the blood purge of June. 30th was Dr. Klausener, Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Transport and Chief of the Rhenish Catholic Party. He was shot at his desk. Two of Von Papen':; secretaries were killed at their desks. The story of the murders of July 30, 1934, is one of the most grisly stories in history. How fares federalism in the U. S. A.'! On June 7th last, Senator King of Utah declared on the floor of the Senate that "local self-government lies at the very foundation of a free country" but that "if present policies continue, the states will become mere shells out of which all life has departed." The handmaiden of liberty is home rule. It is wh11t Ireland fought for and at last secured after 700 tragic years. Home rule is what the despotism of Russia and the imperialism of old Germany denied the Polish people after Poland's cruel dismemberment. Our states as aut·J· nomous commonwealths are being rapidly destroyed. In the domain of taxation, Governor Lehman of New York pointed out that the Federal Government is exhausting the sources of the state's financial support and reducing the states to "vassalti." This practice has made it necessary for governors to io to the President seeking donations from the federal treasury-a treasury whose only source of supply is the savings of the American people. A state that has to solicit alms from a central government is no longer sovereign. It has lost even its self-respect. The second basic command of the Constitution: Entrust no official with auto~ cratic power, has been scorned during re· cent years. No such concentration of powec· m the hands of the Executive as now exists hns ever before been seen in this Republic. Never before hns this been a oneman country. Washington's refusal of a third term, Jefferson's refusal of a third term, Coolidge's refusal of a third term, were all based on the principle that it must always be demonstrated that this is not a February 15, 1940one-man country. Jeffel'son declared th~t the two-term-only precedent set ,by Washington was "sound and salutary," that it is as much a president's "<luty to lay down his 'charge at a ~proper time as to have borne it faithfully." He added: "If some termination to the. service of the Chief Magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution or supplied by practice, 1his office nominally for years, will in fact' become for l;fe; and history shows how easy tbat degenerates iiito an inheritance." A oneman country soon becomes a dictatorship no matter what its governmental form. The placing in the hands of · the President, of billions of dollars to be sJ)ent as he sees fit and where he sees fit, clothes him with dictatorial power. Millions of individuals are on the federal pay roll an<~ it is conceded that 90 per cent of them vote as the l'resident wills. As t4ese voters have other voters in their families, it follows that the President haS, through his control of jobs, a control over the electorate which is utterlY repugnant to a free expression of the public will. "Priming th~ pump" has become a mere euphemism for pumping the primaries. , The greatest work-master in American history is now attempting to become the greatest vote-master in American history. Senator Byrd has l'ecently d~clared that there are today .7,000,000 direct and 82,-_ 000,000 indirect recipients of federal funds. The giatitude of the recipients of such funds is translated into votes for the man from whom they seem to think tl)e fun\ls come. We have seen recently the sp~ctaclc of the Ptesident going into a state to solicW votes for his candidate for the United states Senate and his first utterance upon reaching that state was . to promise the voters that he · would spend $14,000,000 of public money on bridge-building in that state. If he had succeeded in his purpose to fill the Senate with marionettes, this nation in its descent to n dictatorship would have "touched bottom." President Wash· ington rebuked a man who asked him mer!!· ly to express his wishes in the selection of a certain congressman. Washington, "thou shouldst be living at" this hour, America hath need of thee: she hath become a fen \ Of stagnant waters. . . • Oh! raise us up, return to us aga1n; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, - p_ower!" President James 'Buchanan and Senator Stephen A. Douglas were political enemies, though m,6'mbers of the same party, but there is no record of Buchanan asking the people of Illinois to defeat Douglas when he ran for the United ·States Senate in 1858; President Jackson and John C. Calhoun were political enemies, though members of the same party,· but therii is no record of J ackscm attempting •to brini Fehruary 15, 1!>40 about the termination of 'Calhoun's senatorial career. The respective independence of the ExecutiVe, tbjil Legislature and the Judiciary, is the corner-stone of American constitutional government, and that the voters · of l\Iaryland, South Carolina and Georgia . and other states have recently reasserted their independence in defiance of presidential ·interference is the most hopeful thing that has happened in this country since the court-packing plan and the reorganization plan were killed by ~ourageous Senators and Congressmen. This defiance of the President transcended all party considerations; it was a manifestation of old-fashioned Americanism. It would have delighted equally Hamilton and Jefferson, Lincoln and Douglas, Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt. At the last session of Congress :i senator known as a presidential "yes man" introduced a bill to penalize any newspaper for publishing a falsehood. As some governmeni;al bureaucrat would be the judge of the fa:si"ty of an article challenged, that law would have destroyed the liberty of the press. T.he original N. R. A. had a press licensing measure attaclJ.ed to it. It required a fight to kill it. Napoleon III was elected President o:i France and in a few years he had subverted the Constitution he had sworn to support and became an hereditary Emperor. Read what the historian Lecky says about the methods Napoleon III employed .to acquire arbitrary .power. Possibly you will n~tice a present-day parallelism. Th'.s is what Lecky says· in his :•Democracy and · Liberty" of Napoleon III and his political "technique·•: "Every official from the highest to the lowest was turned into an electioneering agent. All the powers of administration were systematically employed in directing votes. Each constituency was taught that its -prospect of obtaining roads or bridges or harbors or other local .:i.dvanta_ ges depended on its support of the government and if the official candidate succeeded he would have the power of distributing among his supporters innumerable small government places, privileges and homes.... The legislators were elected by universal suffrage yet the government (!>ecause of its control of the voters) became an almost :ibsolute despotism." Re describes the government of Napoleon III as "a government. with no real constitu. tionnl freedom, no liberty of the press and no liberty of public meeting." The Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th ed., says of Napoleon III: "His was the government of cheap bread, great public work!; and holidays." History reco-Nis that Napoleon Ill's grandiose schemes brought ruin to his country. The dh;astrous Franco-Prus~ian War, followed by the Paris Commune, in which there were 20,000 executions, and colossal destruction of property, was th~ fruit of his lust for power. The FrancoPrussian War, which this dictator caused, THE LAWYERS' JOURNAL I led, with its Alsace-Lorriline aftermath, to the World War of 1914. Such are the fruits of dict8:torship. We have in this country now an executive whose personal power is greater than the head of any constitutional state ever possessed. This power is based almost eXclusively on the fact that Congress has gi.ven him a blank check on virtually unlimited public funds. These funds are used .to increase and perpetuate- executive powel". This po,Ver generated by public funds was almost sufficient to enable the President to pack the Supreme Court so that it would be but the echo of his will, and thereby destroY our constitutional government. 87 power. TheY care not what happens to their country tomorroui so long as they o.r·~ cheere.d today. An excited state of the public mind , has no more relation to the public's reflective judgment than a clouJ. burst has to the beneficence of rain. Where a Constitution like ours is maintained and laws respected the:re is always "an appeal from Philip drupk to Philip sober." The fourth basict principle of the Constitution is: Maintain an inde_pendent judiciary. Everywhere cowed courts have meant an ensla:ved rcople. In his march to absolutism every dictator h::u; destroy~d the independence of th~ judiciary. Before Hitler had been in Austria 72 hours, he revoked the commissions of independent How about the third commond; Never judges and put puppets in their places, permit unrestrained power to be lodged exactly as he had done in Germany. Na· anywhere, not even in 'a majority? This poleon III did the same thing in his march principle has not yet been destroyed but it to absolutism in France. Victor Hugo has been disdained. Men now in power graphically tells that story. havlf, decla;·ed that there should be no cucb The Proposal last year to pack the Suon the popular will as expressed by a ma- preme Court was avowedly to · make that jority. This means th:!!.t neither an in- court valida.te :my law the President want· dividual nor a mitiority has any rights ed. The success ·of that sch<?me would which the majority are bound to respect. have ended this constitutional Republic. It means the yielding of principle to what Josiah W. Bailey, North Carolina's ablt! sP.ems like temporary expediency. It means and courageous Senator, said in an aadress abject surrender to the pressure of preju· on June 20th last, that the President's dice or emotion. No nation is worthy to court-packing plan was "a direct attack be called a republic where majority rule upon ~he independence of the judiciary, for is not restricted by constitutional minority the express purpose of having the court protection. Otherwise the passion or the uphold as within ihe power of Congress, caprice of the majority at any time is acts passed at the instance of the Presidthe supreme law of the land, and nn man's ent, which according tO every decision of life, , liberty or property is secure. In a the court in similar cases have been unigenuine constitutioniil government the law formly held to be beyond the power nf. and not the mob, rules, and whatever the Congress." Senator Bailey added: "No majority may in a moment of madness or president takes an oath to suJ)port the Con· excitement demand, must yield to the in- stitution as he understands it. He must telligent and sober jl!dgment the organic _ accept the court's interpretation or. be over law embodies. Freedom does not Jong sur- the Constitution and not ttnder it." Senvive where the law of force supplants the ator Bailey characterized the court·packforce of law. A ship that is steered by ing proposal "as . a blow against the prothe hurricane soon becomes a ship-wreck. cess of democracy most essential to its A great navigator consults his charts and existence-the constitutional check on Exeadheref.; to the established principles of na- cutive and Legislr.tive po~er," and said: vigation. Real statesmen and fearless "I am appalled when I consider that labor judges ofttimes have to stem the torrent. and struggle was required to repel an atThey go with the tide only when the tide tack that in any: other period would have sets in the right direction. Every great at once disgraced those who made it.'1 American President at times breasted the Senator Wheeler. of Montana on March popular tide. This was particularly true 10, 1937, stated that .the President's pu!'· of Washington and Lincoln and Cleveland. pose in atlding six new justices to the SuTheir quest w2s· for the path not of popu- preme Cour.t was to make that court "sub· larity but of right, and when they found servient to his will." Carter Glass said that path they travelled 1 it without on March 29, 1987: "No threat to refear. They never counted voices of ap- presentative democracy since the foundaproval, they weighted them, and to them ·iion of this Republic has exceeded in its the most weighty voices were those of ir.- evil portents this nttempt to P.ack the Su· telligence and .conscience. The insatiabl~ preme Court of the United States and thus appetite that certain men in power havl':! destroy the purity rmd independence of this for popular applause is the chief cause of tribunal of last resort." The Senators who the evils that now beset the world. Any- snved the Supreme Court should be honone who eleven days ~go heard on the ra- ored alongside the signers of the Declaradio, the German dictator's speech to a tion of Independence. When the Chief howling mob of fanatical supporters ca:?l Executive of any country can dictate to understand what the intoxication of ap- its Congress and to its courts, he is in fact plause does to petty men clothed with great a dictator no matter what may be his title. 88 lf he claims tho.t his dictatorship is "Qenevolen.t," he js cl11iming an impossibility, ior a "benevolent. dictatorship" , is as much a contradiction in terms,.. o.s "patriotic ti·eason." Absolute power transforms its possessor into :i. tyrant no matter how bcnevolent'his original nature. "Powei· breeds arrogance and arrogance corrupteth the unders,tanding heart." Any American who consents to giving the ~hie! Executive dictatorial powers either doesn't know or care what he i;;; doing or is a slave in his soul. If Americans are to continue to enioy the protection of the Constitution, they must be vigilant and resolute to defend it. But violation of the Constitution is not the only route to a dictatorship. A nation c~m lsquande!· itself into a collapse which leads to chaos and then t'o a dict.'.1.torship. No limit on governmental speNling was imposed by the Constitution, for it was assuri~ed that the people would not permit themselves to be reduced to insolvency by ·spendthrifts in public office: Since the British P:u:liariient won the i·ight to control the British P"Urse, it has more than once "l'efused to open it at the behest of the king. Whenever a British king has. gone to Parliament for money: he has gone humbly, with his hat and not his sceptro in his hand. Governmental extravagance and the excessive taxation it entails have always been the heralds ~f social disorder and economic anarchy. Taine in his "Ancient Regime" said: "During the decline of the Roman Empire so enor~~:;e:~:·ot~: ~:~;tp~!~:x::!~~et~:~e~~: and woods grew where the plow had been." Herbert Speneer said: "When the French E,evolution was arproaching, public burdens were so !Jeavy that many farms remained uncultivated and deserted, one quarter of the soil was lying waste and in some provinces one-half was in heath." When a nation's annual tax bill r:aches more than 2? per cent of the national income, it ;5 time to put up danger signals. Benjamin Franklin declared that for a government to take from its people one-tenth of its jnC~D?-~, in taxes would be ''hard and oppres· s1ve. A government that costs a country more than 20 per cent of its national income is leading it to debt repudiation in the form or-inflation or depreciation of cur ... rency, to be followeQ by social disorder anti economic chaos. Today the annual cost of federal, state and local government is eighteen billions of dollars or about 30 per cent of our national income. The public debt of .n? other people in history ever equalled the present public debt of the United States, including the debts of states, countries and -municipalities. The total is in round numbers $60,000,000,000. The federal deficit during the current fiscal year is now running at the rate ~f four billions of dollars. This ,equals the cost of the Civil War. As we cannot en· dure a 30 per cent tax collecJion, we have THE LAWYERS' JOURNAL resorted to borrowing which means taxf!s deferred and with interest. · The increase ·in the national debt by th~ Present administration is a sum equalling nearly fifteen dollars a minute from the birth ni Christ to the present day. In one of his la'st. public utterances Senator Rohinson said in the Senate on June 18, 1937: "Gentlemen may laugh about a $36,000,000,000 debt but with all my refined and expansive sense of humor, :r find it impossible to lpugh about it." That debt bas increased 11 per cent since Senator Robinson uttered those words and by June l, 1939, it " will be forty billions of dollars. Carter Glass said last June: "'fhis country is 'in a state of irretrievable bankruptcy." The present leader of the majority ' in the United States Sen· ate was interviewed a few weeks ago about the federal deficit. , He said (as reported): "f don't agree that there is no alternativ~ other than heavy taxation. If money is needed, it ~vill have to be found." As to where he expects to "find" the mone~ he gives no clue. Possibly he expects. to find it "at the foot of. the rainbow." A crew which glides down the. Niagara River in a canoe, attentive only to the alluring prospect on the sfiore and hoping to "find" land, i5 headed for catastrophe. When Mr. Roosevelt was a candidate for President in 1932, he said: "If the n;ttion, like :'. spendthrift throws discretion to the winds and is willing to make no sacrifice at all in spending, if it extends its taxing to the limit of the "people's power to ' pay February 15, 1940 thrift useless ii'nd paralyzes the initiative of a people. Today Americans are in the n=-..me of taxation having their ., accumulations confiscated and their daily 'earnin:s devoured. Public officials who would impoverish and strangle the industrial life .,f the natio'h were never d~eamed of by the men who established this Re~ublic. The Constitution provides that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. The colossal and corroding waste of public funds on· every hand is proof that the present-day taxpayer is not getting "just compensation" ' for the property taken from him.' The Constitution specifically mentions life, li· berty and property as being the l'!ubje~ts of its protection. Today the government is not conserving property, it is consuming i't. It's only a short step from taking property to taking liberty. Andrew Jackson said in '1is Farewell Address, March i, 1837: "There is no power conferred on the Federal Government so liable to abuse as the taxing power. Congress has O() right to take money from the people unless money is required to execute some of the specific powers entruS'ted to the government." Another cause of the collapse of repub· ~;.: 1:z:~i~:e~a~~k:i:~etc::.. de;~~~· n:ti~~ ~: tisfy too many human wants. This colnow nearer by fifteen billions of dollars to ~:vdse g::~~m~~;~1:;!s~'~o p~~;;:!:~t St~cii:;: !7~~u~:: ~~~:·e~~ 'V:~e '::~:n~~::reasd~~~ and from the confusion of them comes th~ folly of fanatics. Society involves all hulies is their overloading. When a government takes on more responsibilities than any government can discharge successfully, it is courting chaos. The Ge.rman republic collapsed because it undertook _ to sa~~0;:~~n:~o~~v;~::e::or~:r~=rcth;4,;;:,~ man relationships, and only limited areas 000,000. This year they are over $9,000,- are a legitimate field for government. No 000.000. Great Britain was in the 'Vorld government possesses the wisdom or power War fifty-one months, she has a population of Providence. Putting a man into office only one-third as k\rge as ours and she has does not make him a superman. Even su740 '.nhabitants to every square mile of permen are "super" only in special lines, land while we have only 41, yet on June and, in government, they have been few. 8, 1935, her Prime Minister was able to The men who aspire to the role of Proviannounce that her budget was balanced, dence in controlling society have usually her taxes were cut by $60,000,000, th~ been failures in their private lives. 1 They~ public confidence h::i.d been restored, trade seem to think that mating mediocrity with revived and that the number of people in public office begets genius. It is not so. employment tl1ere was the highest ever The association is more likely to beget these recorded in the history of that country. "twins":. delusions of grawieur and an That is another example of the fact that ambition to admi,;ister civilization. The str:.tesmanship cooperates with natural geniuses in government hnve been men whu forces and cures the ills of the body-econo- undf!rstood government's natural limitamic while quackery meddles with nature tions----understood that while g"Overnment's and either kills the patient or cause a de· capacity for good is limited, its capacity v~.stating relapse. for evil is unlimited-understood that while The Thirteen Colonies \vcTit to wa/ on any "quack" can kill, the greatest physithe proposition: "T~xation without rep re- cian can cure only wheh he coopl!rates with sentatfon is tyranny." 'Ve now have a tax:- Nature's healing processes. Jefferson's ation with representation that is a tyr~n4 best known dictum is "tha~ governme~t govny for worse thr.n that which drove the ems best which governs least." Sper1gler Colonbts to revolt. Montesquieu said, and said that Bismarck was a statesman of the all history proves it, that "the effect of .... firnt rank, for in his statesmanship ''his excessi\•e taxation is slavery." It makes high policy was the art of the possible." Feb;uary 15, 1940 That most profound analyst, Gustave L e Bon, says that "the basic philosophy of th~ French Revolution was that a society may be remade in all its parts by means of institution$. The lawmakers of that day resolved to break with the past, fOund a new era, fix prices and legislate for the human race. They wanted .to annihilate the past but in the end they were annihi1:1.ted. Their faith in the power of laws and institutions was absolute. After ten yrors of violence and destruction and burning and pillage and massacre their impotence was revealed so sh~rtingly that they fell into universii.I reprobation. The pos· sibility- or.remaking society, by means of hws has been given the lie by observatioi1 and experience.'' Woodrow Wilson m•1st have had such ·remakerS of society in mind when he said here in Chicago · in 1909: "The men who are dangerous are the men who propound theork'!s which will make a 11ew pattern for society and a new model for the urliverse. These are the men who nre not to be trusted.'' The decisive test of any law is not its objective but its workability. The doctors who bled George Washington "meant well" but they J...-i.lled their patient. The League of Nat10ns had n noble objective but it hasn't worked. It did harm. · England dcJlended too much upon it and neglected 1·e· armament. Na pilot of a ship of State dare ignore the i·ocks and reefs of reality. Marshal Foch was a reaUst and said that world peace would come only when the ambitions of nations no longer clashed and peace lodged in ?-ll human he:!rts. Treaties cannot guaran~ peace and laws can· not CTeate prosperity. No law can kill the profit motive or the insti1':t to possess 'J)roperty and no la'~ C2.n restore business confidence and enterprise in a country whose public officials are constantly attti.cking capital. In all countries and in all ages scared capital means idle capital and idle capital means idle men. To have employees there must be employers. It has been recently said that "every man in th~ United States who possesses prnperty of any kind is afraid of being robbed and almosi certain· of being. ruined. The only urrcert~inty is 'vhether the robbing will be accomplished through taxation, inflation, confiscation ~or all three.'' An attack cm capital is an attack on something ptoduced by liberty. Only free men have capital. A slave has no property, he is property. We have men in high station who ·de-· nounce communism and yet foster practices . that are leading directly to it. Every attack on capital, every policy that squeezes value out o:( property ahd interferes with its use, are steps toward communism. He who rails against s~ccess and excellence has in himself .the making of a communist. He is certainly giving communism "aid and comfor~.'' If multiplicity of laws made for prosperi£y, Americiln prosperity would be unpard'I'BE LAWYERS' JOURNAL leled. No other nation can rival us in multipliCity of laws. Thc1:e is a law prohibit;. ing even the interstate shipping of a potato if it's less than 1-1/2 inches in diame· , ter. Our bureaucracy is the world's bulki~st. There are 1,000,000 employees on the federal government's civil pay \:oil. Since July 1, 1933, the guvernment bmlt 664 new office building's outside of Washington at a cost of $239,000,000 and three years la~r it was leasing 11,842 other buildings, all aS office Space for its employees. Th·~ I floor spa_ ce of buildings owned and leased by the government o'utside of Washington is the equivalent of fifty-two Empire St"ate bUildings. Government agencies became rn numerous in ·the 'District of Columbia that some had to go to Baltimore for office space. This huge bureaucracy has functioned so wastefully that, according to Senator Byrd of Virginia, it bUilt dwelling.;; in Virginia aJ: a cost of $8,000 'which local builders agreed to :reproduce fo1· $900. The government.built elsewher,e 15,000 homes at a cost of $16,000 each, which puts them beyond the reach of the tenants they wc1·c built fol". The multitude of laws and om· colossal taxes have mired American busi· ness into stagnation. Enterprise thrives only in freedom. The expensive "New De;l" remedies have had no more curative effects on the depression than cosmetics have on Character. 'The United Stb.tes had periodic depressions before 1929, and so d!d every other country in the world. The records prove that depressibns here and elMwhere lasted on an ~verage of five and six. tenths years and then prosperity returned. In 1838 at about the bottom of the four. year depression of that period the national debt wns less than h'nlf of what it had been five years before. When President Van Buren was urged to take measures of relief which he deemed unsound, he said i.n :'.!. message to Congress on September 4, 1837: "All communities are apt to look to government for too much especially , at periods of distress. The framers of our Constitution acted on a sounder principle. They wisely judged that the less govern· went interferes with private pursuits the better. It is not its object to repair by grants of money or legislation in favor of particular pursuits, losses not incurred in the public service. This would be to use the property of some for the benefit of others. It never assuming even for a wen. meant oQject, such powers as were not designated to be conferred upon it, we shall in reality do most for the general welfare.'' :The depression of 1873 lasted six years. When President Hayes took office in 1877, he described the country's industrial condition as one of "prostration.'' But he adhered t<!, sound principles during his fouryear term and when he turned the country "over to his successor in 1881, - the latter was able to announce that "the prosperity which now prevails is without parallel in any history." During President Hayes' 89 term the national debt had been reduced by $64,000,000. The depression, of _1893 both here and abroad,' which lasted five years, was characterized by the 'then Governor of the Bank of England as "the most severe financial disturbance of the Century.'' Yet. President Cleveland declared that the American people "can . be assured of safety only as 1Qng as the nation's solvency is unsuspected," and with dauntless courage he held the country to sound financial po1icie!l, and the country moved forward Under President McKinley ,to another era of un~ paralleled prosperity, and during that errtfre five-year deptession period the national debt was not increaied ns much as it is now increased in two weeks. Why has the 1929 depression been ex. tended to nearly ten years and the national indebtedness increased nearly twenty bil:~:b~:l~~~:e ~~~;s 0!~~·o::p::;s~~~:t:~:i:~ increase 1 in the national debt? The diffc:r'enCe is the difference between sound statepmanShip and reckless experim'i!ntation in the treatn'tent of the ills of the body-economic. There is no other explan~. tion. It is asserted that we recovered from ;~~:t~:r~~pr;;s:~n=s~~c;~e ;:;:~ a;0:~p:1: men becan'ie idle they took up free Western lands ;;.nd became prosperous._ Those who remember earlier depressions do not recall any such exodus- from Eastern homes to Western homesteads. Two-thirds of the 1891 decade were depression years. Our populntion then increai;;ed by 13,046,861. The trans-Mississippi area increased ' in population by only 3,936,561 men, women anil children. Our population increase by immigratio11 during that decade was 1J,687,564, mostly adult male laborers. The millions thei;i out of work were obViously not absorbed by the free lan·ds of the West. Political and economic delusions are as old as those of alchemy and witchcraft and youth-restoring potions. Ponce de Le011 led his men on a well-financed quest for "the fountain of eternal youth" but it ended in disaster for him and his followers.. In_ 1880, David A. Wells, a profoulld economist, said of schemes to end financial ills and create prosperity by legislation: "Their authors think they have 'discovered something new in the domain of economic truth but the record of the. past shows that all such s~hemes ~ but repetitions of old imbecilities. Those who war on natural laws meet failure and disaster.'' The American billions entrusted . to empil"ics for investment have yieJJed ~o dividends but disappointment. The statistic31 Year Book of 1937-38 Just issued by the LCague of Nations shows that during the world-wide depression starting late in 1929 the United States has made the poorest record for recovery of all the nations on the globe. Taking the industrial production 1929 as th~ basis and representing it by the figure 100, Great Britain's industri:'ll 90 production is now 124, Sweden's 146, and the United States is 64, which is far the lowest of the seventeen nations reporting. Occasionally smrle Amexican who goes to Russia or Germany on a visit professes to like what he finds there, though I observe that he doesn't stay there. If he wants to understand :t dictatorsliip in all its phases, let him seek out the families of those whom dictators have murdered and imprisoned; let him think of the 800,000 Jews of Germany and Austria who have been despoiled of their possessions and denied the right to practice · their professions or otherwise earn their daily bread simph• because of their race; let him consult the clerics and nuns who have been cast into prison for exercising freedom of religion. Let him interview the editors who have been imprisoned or exiled for ·exercising freedom of spe.ech. If any one contemplstes the peace and order found in dictatr orships, he should recall the words of the Czar who, after l'!onfiscating the property of- Poles and jailing and executing them by the thousands, proclaimed: "Peace reigns in Wnrsaw." The dictator type is well known. Washiniton and Lincoln were not of the type, for they possessed no vanity. Napoleon said that the leaders of the French Revolution were all animated by vanity. A dictator crilves adulation, is always sure that his talents and virtues surpass thosz of others, and he feels thit to question his judgment is treason. Dictators are selfrighteous, self-confident and arrogant. Their test of political ethics is political consort with them. · The dictator Robe:Spierre is described by historians as a "a man of mediocre intelligence, incapable <'f grasping realities, crafty and dissdnulating, his prevailing note being Pride and vanity." His method was to kill those who did not conform to his views. Dictators are also jealous men. They brook no rivals and are intolerant of intellectual equals or superiors. Stalin killeJ off his equals and superiors and Hitler has done the same. Robespierre and Danton -were friends and allies in the early stages of the French Revolution, but when Robespierre be<'!ame powerful enough to do S'J, he guillotined DantOn. Both Le Bon and Michelet say that Robespierre "put his associates to death because he wa::1 jealous of their talents, whil'!h eclipsed his." The typical demagogue-dictator is "In friendship false, implacable in hate Resolved to_ 1·uin or rule the state." Demagogues succeed only in an atmos.... phere of emotion. Since hate is the m~st powerful of all emotions, they engendel' it. The ea~iest hate to engender is class hatred. It is also the most fatal to the welfare of nations. James Bryl'!e said that "class war is a menace to mankind and the heaviest THE LA WYERS' JOURNAL blow ever directed against democral'!y." In stirring up class warfare the demagogue alway3 selects some minority group as the object of hate. In France of the 1790's it was the nobility, in Russia the aristocracy and in Germany the Jews. In America it is the "el'!onomic royalists." An "econ.:.mic royalist" n.pPears to be something evil to have in the country but nice to have in the family. The demagogue first deludes the people with an exaggerated belief h the power of government to promote human welfare and happiness and he then foments 1·evolutions to achieve impossibilities, hop. ing that in the social upheaval he will be cast up in the role of dictator. The wor)ri today is a witness to a dictator's power for evil. It is characteristic of would-be dictators that they always disclaim any intention of being dictators. Even Julius Caesar put "the proffered crown aside" while at the same time he was looting the Roman treasury to increase and. perpetuate his power. No dictator today even wears that title. We had a dictator in an .. American state :a few years ago who rejoiced in thC title of "Kingfish." His s~nse of humor which led him to exploit that title did not prevent him from attempting to suppress in his state, along with individual liberties, th2 liberty of the press, which attempt was frustrated by the Supreme Court of th<i United 'states. ' When demagogues with their "catch words" and seductive illusions and false promises acquire the dictatorial power their vanity covets, they proceed by force t..> convert majority into totality, to war on liberty, and to make all non-conformity a crime. This has happened in Russia, in February 15, 1940 Germany and in Spain. In Madrid thfrty tholisand executions have taken place, yti'; three years ago our Minister there wrote that no serious disorder was threatened. But the seeds of class hatred had been sown and the harvest of blood was reaped when the smouldering passions were· released and legal and social restraints cast off. In the late 1780's France was acclaimed the most civilized nation in the world. A few years later in the fury of cl~ss warfare, the heads of kings, nobles and laboring men were cllt off with pcrfeet "equality" and French rivers ran incarnadine to the sen. The demag-ogues wp.o started all this perished too. Q,ne of history's most dramatic moments was when Danton, on the i;caffold, asked pardon of God and man for the part he had taken in fomenting the French Revolution. Aristotle said: "All dictators begin as demagogues." Demosthenes said: "To guard against tyrants is the first duty of a people wll.o desire to remain free." All history teal'!hes that if the social stream is permitted, when lashed into torrential rage, to forsake its chanr,el and leap its ba:-riers, it will spread devastation far and wide"~~;:e ~!: ~0;i~e ~~ ~~~~h we right enjoy, If power unquestioned can those laws destroy." Such are the lessons of the past. ''Shall all these things be washed in the waters ;,f Lethe and forgotten?" Or shall Americans "wake up" before it is too Tate, and . stand!ng shoulder to shoulder regardless of party, maintain the restraints of law "'and order and repel every attempted breach of the Constitntijn? DRESS ELEGANTI..Y With Smart Suits Made Just The Style You. Desire J. C. de lo~ Reye• We guarantee oil of our work We Wish To Announce The Opening Of Our l\Iodern Haberdashery j'ust next door to us JULIAN C. DE LOS REYES Manage?· and Master Cutter Our Motto: "To Serve With Satisfaction." THE SMART BROS. TAILORING 840 O'Donnell, Sta. Cruz, Manila Res. Tel. 2-70-55 IN ANSWERING ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE LAWYERS' JOURNAL