71:1.4 1. Acquirement and inheritance of private property.
71:1.5 2. Cities plus agriculture and industry.
71:1.6 3. Helpful domestic animals.
71:1.7 4. Practical family organization. These red men clung to the mother-family and nephew inheritance.
71:1.8 5. Definite territory.
71:1.9 6. A strong executive head.
71:1.10 7. Enslavement of captives — they either adopted or massacred them.
71:1.11 8. Decisive conquests.
71:1.12 ¶ The red men were too democratic; they had a good government, but it failed. Eventually they would have evolved a state had they not prematurely encountered the more advanced civilization of the white man, who was pursuing the governmental methods of the Greeks and the Romans.
71:1.13 ¶ The successful Roman state was based on:
71:1.14 1. The father-family.
71:1.15 2. Agriculture and the domestication of animals.
71:1.16 3. Condensation of population — cities.
71:1.17 4. Private property and land.
71:1.18 5. Slavery — classes of citizenship.
71:1.19 6. Conquest and reorganization of weak and backward peoples.
71:1.20 7. Definite territory with roads.
71:1.21 8. Personal and strong rulers.
71:1.22 ¶ The great weakness in Roman civilization, and a factor in the ultimate collapse of the empire, was the supposed liberal and advanced provision for the emancipation of the boy at 21 and the unconditional release of the girl so that she was at liberty to marry a man of her own choosing or to go abroad in the land to become immoral. The harm to society consisted not in these reforms themselves but rather in the sudden and extensive manner of their adoption. The collapse of Rome indicates what may be expected when a state undergoes too rapid extension associated with internal degeneration.
71:1.23 ¶ The embryonic state was made possible by the decline of the blood bond in favour of the territorial, and such tribal federations were usually firmly cemented by conquest. While a sovereignty that transcends all minor struggles and group differences is the characteristic of the true state, still, many classes and castes persist in the later state organizations as remnants of the clans and tribes of former days. The later and larger territorial states had a long and bitter struggle with these smaller consanguineous clan groups, the tribal government proving a valuable transition from family to state authority. During later times many clans grew out of trades and other industrial associations.
71:1.24 Failure of state integration results in retrogression to prestate conditions of governmental techniques, such as the feudalism of the European Middle Ages. During these dark ages the territorial state collapsed, and there was a reversion to the small castle groups, the reappearance of the clan and tribal stages of development. Similar semistates even now exist in Asia and Africa, but not all of them are evolutionary reversions; many are the embryonic nucleuses of states of the future.
2. THE EVOLUTION OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
71:2.1 Democracy, while an ideal, is a product of civilization, not of evolution. Go slowly! select carefully! for the dangers of democracy are:
71:2.2 1. Glorification of mediocrity.
71:2.3 2. Choice of base and ignorant rulers.
71:2.4 3. Failure to recognize the basic facts of social evolution.
71:2.5 4. Danger of universal suffrage in the hands of uneducated and indolent majorities.
71:2.6 5. Slavery to public opinion; the majority is not always right.
71:2.7 ¶ Public opinion, common opinion, has always delayed society; nevertheless, it is valuable, for, while retarding social evolution, it does preserve civilization. Education of public opinion is the only safe and true method of accelerating civilization; force is only a temporary expedient, and cultural growth will increasingly accelerate as bullets give way to ballots. Public opinion, the mores, is the basic and elemental energy in social evolution and state development, but to be of state value it must be nonviolent in expression.
71:2.8 The measure of the advance of society is directly determined by the degree to which public opinion can control personal behaviour and state regulation through nonviolent expression. The really civilized government had arrived when public opinion was clothed with the powers of personal franchise. Popular elections may not always decide things rightly, but they represent the right way even to do a wrong thing. Evolution does not at once produce superlative perfection but rather comparative and advancing practical adjustment.
71:2.9 ¶ There are ten steps, or stages, to the evolution of a practical and efficient form of representative government, and these are:
71:2.10 1. Freedom of the person. Slavery, serfdom, and all forms of human bondage must disappear.
71:2.11 2. Freedom of the mind. Unless a free people are educated — taught to think intelligently and plan wisely — freedom usually does more harm than good.
71:2.12 3. The reign of law. Liberty can be enjoyed only when the will and whims of human rulers are replaced by legislative enactments in accordance with accepted fundamental law.
71:2.13 4. Freedom of speech. Representative government is unthinkable without freedom of all forms of expression for human aspirations and opinions.
71:2.14 5. Security of property. No government can long endure if it fails to provide for the right to enjoy personal property in some form. Man craves the right to use, control, bestow, sell, lease, and bequeath his personal property.
71:2.15 6. The right of petition. Representative government assumes the right of citizens to be heard. The privilege of petition is inherent in free citizenship.
71:2.16 7. The right to rule. It is not enough to be heard; the power of petition must progress to the actual management of the government.
71:2.17 8. Universal suffrage. Representative government presupposes an intelligent, efficient, and universal electorate. The character of such a government will ever be determined by the character and caliber of those who compose it. As civilization progresses, suffrage, while remaining universal for both sexes, will be effectively modified, regrouped, and otherwise differentiated.
71:2.18 9. Control of public servants. No civil government will be serviceable and effective unless the citizenry possess and use wise techniques of guiding and controlling officeholders and public servants.
71:2.19 10. Intelligent and trained representation. The survival of democracy is dependent on successful representative government; and that is conditioned upon the practice of electing to public offices only those individuals who are technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal, and morally fit. Only by such provisions can government of the people, by the people, and for the people be preserved.
3. THE IDEALS OF STATEHOOD
71:3.1 The political or administrative form of a government is of little consequence provided it affords the essentials of civil progress — liberty, security, education, and social co-ordination. It is not what a state is but what it does that determines the course of social evolution. And after all, no state can transcend the moral values of its citizenry as exemplified in their chosen leaders. Ignorance and selfishness will ensure the downfall of even the highest type of government.