Remarks on President Goodnow's Paper

Extract

I have listened with unusual interest to the learned paper on “Reform in China” just read by President Goodnow. It seems to me, however, that the Occidental people find no end of difficulty in understanding and interpreting our Oriental laws, customs, and institutions. We are told, for instance, that the Chinese like other Asians, who are mainly agricultural peoples, are unfit for representative government. I doubt if this statement can stand the test of adequate proof. Take, for example, the people of China, whose recorded history runs back to 2800 B. C. These Celestials, these agriculturalists, had from time immemorial enjoyed local self-government, had been accustomed to “take communal action:” they would close up their business and resist the imposition of an unjust tax. It is to be remembered that the powers of the mother of parliaments developed in this fashion. “The financial functions of parliamentary assemblies are always the centre of their action.”

In India, another agricultural country, we had the village community which contained the true germs of representative government. These village communities have frequently been described by such authorities as Sir Charles Metcalf, Sir Henry Maine as “little republics.”