Representative government on a national scale did not originate in the psychology of primitive Teutons, as English historians long contended; nor is it a mere bourgeois institution of passing significance, designed to delude the masses, as Fascists and Bolsheviks have alleged. Its vast historical complications conform to no such simple thesis. On the contrary, representative government began its career as an instrument of political power, in a given complex of social and economic circumstances, to serve the purposes of ruling monarchs; and it has played a bewildering rôle, in form, spirit, and authority, for more than five hundred years. Flexibility has been its prime characteristic. As a means, not an end in itself, it has served an infinite variety of causes, and has displayed both adaptability and survival power. In form, it has not been a political stereotype. Rather, it has been amazingly variable. In spirit, in the ideas associated with its evolution, and in the uses to which it may be put, representative government is subtle and adaptable, offering to statesmen who have imagination and manipulative capacity a tool of inexhaustible utility.

In the early days of factory management, when the problems and conditions were relatively simple, it fell to the lot of all sorts of human folk to manage the various jobs involved. Each used his own peculiar method and, naturally enough, it came into general belief that ability in management was an instinctive knack, that managers were born, not made, that few if any rules could be laid down, and that little could be learned by one from another. Even in the earliest days, a small handful of men called attention to the fact that management measures and forms of organization could be better or worse adapted to their uses; but for generations the suggestion passed unheeded.

As the problems and conditions of factory management grew more complex and exacting, more men came to believe that the art of management was something more than an intuitive and highly personal knack. Before the Great War, a fair nucleus was beginning to study the art from the point of view of the forces involved, and with an eye to causes and effects. And the war experience of manufacturing strange materials, shifting conditions upside down, built up this nucleus into a very fair working minority.

In November, 1930, Judge William Clark of the United States district court in New Jersey achieved nation-wide notoriety by a decision holding that the Eighteenth Amendment was not properly ratified and is therefore not a part of the Constitution. A prosecution had been brought against one Sprague, under an indictment charging unlawful transportation and possession of liquor in violation of the Volstead Act. This indictment Judge Clark quashed on the ground that the Eighteenth Amendment upon which the Volstead Act rests should have been ratified by conventions called for that purpose in three-fourths of the states, rather than by the legislatures of those states. This conclusion he supported by a long argument emphasizing the fundamental character of the constitutional change effected and the importance and necessity of having such a change accomplished by the agency of representatives elected by the people of the several states for that specific purpose. An appeal from Judge Clark's decision was at once taken by the government under the provisions of the Criminal Appeals Act of 1907. In fact, it was to meet just such situations as this that the act of 1907 was passed; for without the possibility of such appeal a decision of a lower federal court adverse to the constitutionality of a federal criminal statute might be final within the district concerned. No question of double jeopardy is raised by this procedure, since the accused is not placed in jeopardy until the trial jury is sworn and the quashing of the indictment occurs long before that point is reached.

Since the day when Queen Victoria gave her reluctant consent to allow her Government to introduce a form of pass examinations as a means of entrance to the public service, there has been at least one grand inquest each generation into the operation of the experiment thus timidly launched. The Playfair Commission (1874-75) looked skeptically upon the system of open competition inaugurated in 1870; the Ridley Commission (1886-90) reflected the growing confidence in merit and in the Upper Division; the MacDonnell Commission (1912-15) faced, without making commitments, the new organized service which had already made itself felt in the Post-Office, and which was destined in the brief era of “new world” psychology after the war to entrench itself firmly in the Whitley councils for the civil service.

Before the Revolution. Peter the Great, among other attempts to westernize Russia, introduced in 1722 a “table of ranks” consisting of fourteen classes of civil officials (chinovniki) ranging from mere filing clerks to privy councillors. Advancement in civil service also brought with it advancement in social status, but few persons of plebeian origin could reach the higher ranks. Officials attaining the rank of “actual state councillor” automatically became hereditary nobles. The old nobility resented this “corruption of blood;” but with the growth of the Empire, the nobles alone were not sufficiently numerous to render all the civil service necessary for the administration of the state. The admission of non-nobles into civil service was, however, rigidly restricted, not so much by educational qualifications as by stipulations that sons of officials, military officers, orthodox clergy, merchants of the first class, and members of the learned professions should be given preference. Others were admitted provided they were graduated from middle and higher educational institutions with honor (gold medal). Jews were in general excluded, exceptions being made in the case of the medical service.

There are at the present time at least four interrelated trends in the field of public personnel administration. In the first place, emphasis is shifting away from the old evangelism which emphasized the negative aspects of civil service toward placing greater reliance in the perfection of a technique of administration. Secondly, there is increasing dissatisfaction with removal provisions which require a formal hearing with right of counsel before a board independent of the administration. The third phase involves a changed status of the civil service commission: it is to be either abolished entirely or deprived of its administrative duties and confined to quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial activities. The administrative aspects of personnel work are to be placed under a single head responsible to the governor, mayor, or manager.

The main feature of the coup which the most principled, if not the most typical, British newspaper has called “the shortest, strangest, and most fraudulent election campaign of our time” are well known. Recapitulation has its uses, however, even if lack of space, not to mention more fatal inadequacies, must confine it to the narrowest of backgrounds and to statistics that lie near the surface of politics.

Judging from articles on the subject, American interest in British trade union law has been considerable, but spasmodic. Every important decision or statute affecting the legal status of the British trade unions has been followed by articles on this side of the Atlantic outlining the entire history of the British law of labor combinations and attempting to forecast the outcome of the most recent developments. Between times, the subject has not been discussed and no one has presented the actual results of the heralded developments. The Trade Disputes and Trade Union Act of 1927 is the most recent of these developments noted in this country.

On October 24 and 25, 1931, the Swiss voters selected the members of their National Council for the next four years. The election was of unusual importance because the world-wide depression has created an economic crisis in Switzerland. Unemployment has been increasing, banks have been failing, and the national government has been piling up a deficit. A flood of candidates were in the field for the 187 seats now in the National Council (11 less than in the outgoing Council). Of the total of 740 candidates, 193 were nominated by the Independent Democrats, 141 by the Catholic Conservatives, 152 by the Socialists, 85 by the Peasants, 28 by the Liberal Democrats, 77 by the Communists, and 64 by the minor parties.