I have been asked to present for your discussion the pragmatic approach to political science, the reason being, as I suppose, that my business is the study of philosophy and pragmatism is a kind of philosophy. Now philosophy has special interests of its own and hardly ever offers anything that can be taken over ready-made into scientific work with any useful results; moreover, the discussion of methods at large hardly ever leads to much. A method is good for just what it does, and its uses must be apparent just in the science where it is used. I greatly doubt, therefore, whether any good would come of my talking to you about philosophic pragmatism, which is a name of rather indefinite meaning, signifying a group of scientific and philosophic tendencies rather than a systematic doctrine. It does stand roughly for a point of view, which has perhaps been stated most clearly by Professor John Dewey, and it is a fact that this point of view has acted as a sort of ferment outside philosophy, especially in economics and law, and seems likely to have a significant influence on these subjects, at least in America and during the next few years. What I mean to do, therefore, is to try to picture pragmatism in action, compressing into a single paragraph the description of pragmatism as a point of view. To illustrate pragmatism in action, I have chosen some attempts to adopt this point of view in economics, particularly the work of Thorstein Veblen and Professor Wesley C. Mitchell, and also in the study of law, particularly the program put forward by Professors Walter Wheeler Cook and Herman Oliphant.

A study of the beginnings of national representation inevitably brings to the surface details which in their time were part or parcel of mediæval practices. One cannot expect that these usages, even as connected with representative institutions, can be of concern in our more complex modern circumstances, since the Middle Ages had comparatively few and simple problems for legislative solution. In those days the questions of relationship between the administrative and the legislative, and between the local and the central or national, had not emerged clearly. Nevertheless, such details and questions are interesting as examples of mediæval theory and efficiency, and, moreover, some of them are not entirely devoid of connection with present-day difficulties.

The custom of making in advance a decision which was imposed by the electors upon their chosen representative, a custom known as the imperative mandate, was an important factor in early representative government. It was sound in legal theory, and some of its practice will be seen in the pages which follow. Also, its connection is with that early stage in popular government in which the development of representative institutions corresponded somewhat to one phase of the present. I refer to what is apparently a need to ask from the electors themselves their opinion on large, general questions of principle—for example, in our time, the referendum in Germany on the adoption of the Young Plan.

Membership. Even in seasons when politics are pointing toward congressional elections of unusual interest, the filling of vacancies in the House attracts little attention. Political perspectives are almost unavoidably narrowed by the reaction of presidential government; localism confuses general tendencies; and the prevalence of one-party areas further conceals trends which can be read only by a close scrutiny of relative returns. It is not that the opportunity for by-elections is lacking. In the course of the session under consideration, twenty-three seats in the House were vacated, five by resignation and eighteen by death. The resulting replacements brought the Democrats a net gain of one; for, though losing their sole foothold in Pennsylvania, they won in the third district in Kentucky and the second district in Massachusetts. In the latter, never previously represented by a Democrat, the victory of W. J. Granfield in the special election on February 11,1930, was widely noted and deemed significant by many, although it was not clear whether it indicated a desire for drink or a dread of depression.

The Senate came to grips at last with the long-delayed problem of the Pennsylvania senatorship. In accordance with an understanding reached in the special session, Senator Norris's resolution (S. Res. 111) to deny William S. Vare a seat in the Senate came up on December 3. Debate closed on December 6, when the resolution was adopted by a vote of 58 (25 Republicans, 32 Democrats, 1 Farmer Labor) to 22 (all Republicans).

Expansion and Contraction of the Franchise. Between the theory and practice of the American Revolution there was a wide breach. The ruling caste of property owners retained control in spite of the legendary democratization of that era. Jefferson's declaration of the equality of man was not fully applied to suffrage requirements until the time of Andrew Jackson. Since then, suffrage restrictions of property, color, and sex have suffered the fate of houses built upon sand. The floods of democracy have now smitten upon these limitations for more than a century. In the rise of the common man, both the property-owning and taxpaying qualifications for voters disappeared even in the original commonwealths. Once these restrictions which separated the old aristocracy from the new proletariat had been vanquished, the requisites of color and sex were likewise abandoned.

With few exceptions, suffrage had been granted to practically all adult male white citizens before the Civil War. Yet counter-attacks were waged by the advocates of a limited electorate. The theory prevails that a steady swing toward universal suffrage characterizes the American franchise. The pendulum has also swung in the opposite direction. Connecticut and Massachusetts, where the reaction against suffrage extension was rapid, were the first states to retrench on the policy of adult male white suffrage. In place of property qualifications, literacy restrictions appeared. The purpose of these restrictions set up by Connecticut in 1855 and Massachusetts in 1857 was to bar the ignorant immigrants from the voting class.

It is interesting that this work by Professor Keith, who is acknowledged everywhere to be the most authoritative of the commentators on the constitutional system of the British Empire, should have appeared at the very moment when the Conference on Dominion Legislation and Merchant Shipping Laws began its sittings in London in October, 1929. If it was intended to guide their deliberations, the publication of the Report of the Conference in February, 1930, shows how widely a conservative statement of the existing law and practice will differ from the new structure of Dominion autonomy, once the Report is accepted by the Imperial Conference, by the Parliament in Great Britain, and by the legislatures of the Dominions. For where Professor Keith saw in the “equal status” of the now classic Balfour Report of 1926 only “exaggerated language,” “careless phraseology,” and “rhetoric,” the Conference took this “root-principle” seriously and applied it throughout. As the Conference contained all the most important legal advisers and civil servants of the governments concerned, besides four Dominion ministers, its report will almost certainly be accepted by the Imperial Conference.

The experts recognized only one general principle from Professor Keith's work: that any changes which are to be made in the legal status quo in relation to certain subjects would have to be accomplished by acts of the British Parliament. These subjects are: (1) disallowance and reservation, (2) the extraterritorial operation of Dominion legislation, (3) the over-riding powers of British legislation laid down by the Colonial Laws Validity Act of 1865, (4) the right of Great Britain alone to legislate on royal titles and the succession to the throne, and (5) the making of basic changes in Merchant Shipping and Colonial Courts of Admiralty Acts.

Casting the largest popular vote yet recorded in any election in Germany, the German people elected on Sunday, September 14, 1930, the fifth Reichstag under the Weimar constitution. Using Article 48, the Brüning government had put into effect certain emergency measures which it considered necessary to alleviate the existing economic situation. But when called upon to pass upon these decrees, the Reichstag rejected them; whereupon the President, on the advice of the cabinet, dissolved the Reichstag and ordered new elections.

The campaign occurred in a time of serious economic depression. Nearly three million unemployed persons were in receipt of government relief, either national or local. Taxes had been increased, salaries decreased, and there was widespread dissatisfaction. The government headed by Chancellor Brüning, from its inception a minority cabinet, appealed to the country to return to power with increased strength the parties which had given it support. On the other hand, the government was severely attacked by the Social Democrats for its use of Article 48; by the Nationalists because of its support of the Young Plan; by the Communists on general principles; and last, but not least, by the National Socialists led by Adolf Hitler, not on general principles, but without any principles at all! In many respects this election resembled the May election of 1924 more closely than the election of 1928.

Not only was the election of critical importance to Germany and the world from an economic point of view, but it was also of great moment in the evolution of German political parties and democratic institutions in general.

The decisive victory, on July 28, of the Conservative party in the seventeenth general election since Confederation came as a surprise to the Canadian people. The party, which did not elect a single member in six of the nine provinces in 1921, carried six provinces decisively and in two others, Saskatchewan and Quebec, scored its greatest successes since 1911. In 1926, Mr. Bennett, the new prime minister, was the only Conservative member between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains. This time he has 23 Conservatives among the 54 Prairie members. He, indeed, has more Conservative supporters in the House of Commons than any prime minister since Sir John A. MacDonald. With a majority of 28, exclusive of the speaker, over all opposition parties, he is the first prime minister in a decade to be undoubted master of the political scene (see note 1 on following page).

When Prime Minister Mackenzie King announced, on May 6, the speedy dissolution of Parliament, he may have thought that it was wise to go to the country before the trade depression had been too prolonged, or, as seems more probable, he may have underestimated the seriousness of the situation. One of his strongest supporters, the Manitoba Free Press, made the following significant comment the day after the election: “The manner in which Mr. Bennett played upon Mr. King's pride, combativeness, and perhaps belief in his star in order to get him in the mood to fight a battle on ground chosen by his opponents and under conditions which helped them and put him at a disadvantage will doubtless be recorded in future books of political strategy for future prime ministers.”