Government

From Encyclopediak

Government, the directing or managing such affairs as concern all people alike, or the organization through which these affairs are managed. Specifically the term is most commonly used as a condensed expression for political government, or the authoritative regulation of the affairs of a political community or state. The first form of social organization resulting in a form of government was one through which all races of people passed, the tribal state of society. There can be no exceptions to this rule. A fully organized tribe, however, was a complicated organization. The divisions of a tribe were the phratry and the gens. Above the tribes was in some instances the confederacy of tribes. The shadowy empires of ancient history, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian, etc. were not empires in our sense of the word. They were instances of one warlike tribe, possibly powerful confederacies, reducing to a subject state other tribes. In a tribal state the organization for government rested on personal relations. As civilization developed and the tribes settled in a well defined section of country, this purely personal relation was not sufficient and the historic people of Europe had to feel their way to political society in which the organization for government is based on territory. This seems to us a perfectly natural step to take but it required many years of experiment and the services of eminent statesmen to effect the change in Greece and Rome then in the early centuries of our era, one after the other, the various people of Europe effected the same change. At present the advanced nations of the world are, and have been for centuries, organized for government purposes on territorial units. Under that form of government preat advance has been made in science and in all the essentials of our present civilization. But all thoughtful students know that there are certain tendencies at nresent that seem to indicate still another form of social organization for government purposes. State Socialism would be such a change one possible form would be the Soviet system of government see SOVIET. It will be noticed that such a change is away from territorial units, and a partial return to personal relations, a government of different groups, for different groups, by different groups. In a tribal state tribal officers, chiefs of all kinds, were elected. The inevitable tendency was for such offices to pass by inheritance. This tendency became more pronounced when political society supervened and the result was the separation of the people into classes, this was the condition in which all European people were placed before many centuries had passed and the troubled unrest in Europe of recent centuries, attended often with bloody scenes, was due to the efforts of the masses of the people to recover a fuller measure of personal liberty enjoyed in primitive times. We can trace the effects of this series of revolutionary movements in the history of every European nation. The forms of political government are varied. When the sovereign authority is vested in a single person that person is properly a monarch when this person rules alone with no restriction on his authority he is an absolute monarch. There is now no example of an absolute monarch in Europe. When there are restrictions on his authority his rule is said to be that of a limited or constitutional monarch. There are now only a few constitutional monarchies in Europe. A king is simply the monarch of a country that is designated as a kingdom. An Empire is a monarchy that possesses a large area and includes a number of states under its rule. The only country answering to this description now is Great Britain. Notice the cycle of evolution in political society from absolute monarchy, through limited monarchy to democratic republics,a form of government which now prevails in 75 per cent of European territory.

DEMOCRACY. According to Lincoln's definition democracy is a government of 1200 the people, by the people, for the people, and is the form in which the people either directly, or through their representatives, are supreme. Ever since the rise of popular education in the last century and its vast development thereafter, the advance of democratic opinion and the spread of democr tic institutions have been most significant. The fundamental basis of democracy is the recognition of the rights of man as man. Its central principle is the equality of all men before the law, without regard to birth, property or social rank, and it may be likened to a state of society absolutely without class distinctions made by laws or customs. The town meeting still in existence in the New England States is the only representative of true democracy in America. In these states the voters of each town assemble once a year to choose town officers and transact any other business pertaining to the town's interest.

REPUBLIC, a form of political organization in winch the principal agents of government are chosen by qualified electors. Such electors may comprise the whole adult population of the state, or all qualified male citizens, or a small group of persons exercising a constitutional or hereditary power of election. In the earlier republics of Greece and Rome the supreme power was vested in the whole body of the citizens who met in common assembly to enact their laws. In all modern republics the representative system prevails, the right of suffrage being liberally granted, but the duties of the administration are confined to a chosen few.

In the Western Hemisphere the republican form of government prevails in all independent states. The United States is a Federal republic consisting of a number of separate states, united by a constitution, under a central government, with power to enact laws binding on all the citizens. Up to the time of the Declaration of Independence the title employed had been United Colonies after that it was the United States of America. See UNITED STATES, subhead Government.

State Government. The Constitution of the United States provides that all powers not delegated to the United States nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people. Among the powers prohibited are the conclusion of treaties, alliances, or confederations, the coining of money, etc. A close study will reveal the fact that the relation of the citizen to the state government is far more close than to the Federal Government. The fundamental law of each state is embodied in a constitution drawn up by a constituent convention and ratified by the electorate at the polls. The position of the heads of the state executive departments is in no sense similar to that of the president's cabinet. The governor has little direction over them and their responsibility is to their constituencies.

Local Government. In the United States there are three general types of local government. They are the town system in New England, the county system in the South, and the mixed system in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and a number of the North Central States. In the main, however, the laws that touch most closely our daily life are left to the states, and of late there is a movement in some of them towards direct legislation under the initiative and referendum. See INITIATIVE, REFERENDUM AND RECALL.