469 1843, years after Bentham's death. But, as is well known, the spread of his ideas was not dependent on his own writings exclusively; his influence on English opinion owed much to the activities of his disciples. Of these the most important was James Mill, who was himself a radiating center of Utilitarianism.' Mill prepared a series of articles for the supplement to the fourth, fifth and sixth editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which expressed the orthodox Utilitarian creed on the subjects of which they treated. In the article "Colony", which appeared in 1824, he condemned the commercial restrictions of the colonial system, and laid it down that colonies were a source of vast expense and political corruption as well as a major cause of war. He was especially opposed to the use of them as convict settlements and strongly reprobated transportation as a punishment for crime.

In 1824 the Westminster Review, the leading organ of Utilitarianism, was founded, and, in the words of John Stuart Mill it "gave a recognized status, in the arena of opinion and discussion, to the Benthamic type of Radicalism." Whenever it had occasion to deal with the colonies, its anti-imperialism was manifest. It viewed them as "impediments to commerce, drawbacks on prosperity, pumps for extracting the property of the many for the benefit of the few, the strongholds and asylums of despotism and misrule." 3 It undertook to prove that British dominion over Canada was bad, economically and politically, for both colony and mother country. If the voice of wisdom were heeded, Great Britain would voluntarily relinquish all authority over the province, but false notions respecting the value of colonies were still so widely entertained that nothing but time and bitter experience would make the truth prevail.

'According to John Stuart Mill (Autobiography) the elder Mill exercised a far greater personal ascendancy in the Utilitarian movement than did Bentham.

Autobiography, p. 98. The Morning Chronicle also was a vehicle of Utilitarian opinion.

Westminster Review (April, 1830), vol. XII, p. 403.

See articles on Canada, Westminster Review (July, 1827, and July, 1830), vols. VIII and XIII.

A subject that gave the Philosophical Radicals much concern was governmental waste and extravagance. From 1818 onwards Joseph Hume, who had acquired his Radicalism from Francis Place, the tailor of Charing Cross and friend of Bentham and James Mill, preached economy in the House of Commons, where he appointed himself watch-dog of the Treasury. The great expense to which Great Britain was put by reason of her colonial possessions was one of his favorite themes.' Another Radical, whose principal interest lay in public finance, a subject on which he was recognized as an authority, was Sir Henry Parnell, also a member of Parliament. In a work published in 1830, On Financial Reform, he argued that the number of British colonies should be greatly reduced, and that those which were retained should bear all the expenses of their own defense. Canada, he calculated, had already, in one way and another, cost the mother country fifty or sixty million pounds and was then an annual expense of at least six hundred thousand.'

Thus by 1830 there was an aggressive and very vocal body of anti-imperial opinion in England. It cannot be said that it had converted the British public, but it is probably not an exaggeration to say that it had put imperialism on the defensive. Those who still believed in the usefulness of colonies felt obliged to justify their faith.3 The public as a whole took no interest in the colonies, and among statesmen there was little enthusiasm for the empire and little confidence that it would endure. The Colonial Office, undeterred by manifestations of discontent in the colonies, was still treading the primrose path of absentee bureaucracy that was soon to lead to rebellion in Canada.

1 See, e. g., Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, vol. XL, pp. 1077-81. 'Chapter xv.

E. G. Wakefield, A View of the Art of Colonization (London, 1849), p. 38; R. C. Mills, Colonization of Australia, pp. 21-2; Quarterly Review, vol. XXXIII, p. 410 et seq., vol. XXXIX, p. 339 et seq.; Sir Howard Douglas, Considerations on the Value and Importance of the British North American Colonies (London, 1831).

4 See, e. g., S. J. Reid, Life and Letters of the First Earl of Durham, vol. II, pp. 137-142.

The future was to be neither with the anti-imperialism nor with the imperialism of 1830, but with the liberal imperialism that arose during the following decade, of which Lord Durham's Report is the most conspicuous landmark. The empire was neither to be dissolved into formally independent fragments, though the time came when many observers believed that such an outcome was imminent, nor was it to be preserved unaltered. It was to be transformed. Yet anti-imperialism was not wholly a lost cause, for it made its contribution to the transformation. To the anti-imperialists the independence of the colonies was, after all, a means rather than an end. The end was the abolition of the old colonial system, with its burdensome restrictions on the trade of the colonies and the mother country, its subjection of the colonies to centralized, bureaucratic control, its vast expense to the taxpayer of Great Britain. The old colonial system has long since passed away, and the old anti-imperialism has disappeared. But if we consider working constitutional practice rather than legal forms, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the British Empire of today, so far at least as its self-governing parts are concerned, conforms more nearly to the ideals of the anti-imperialists of a hundred years ago than to those of their opponents.'

ROBERT LIVINGSTON SCHUYLER

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

For an example of anti-imperial idealism, the reader is referred to J. A. Roebuck, The Colonies of England. The author was one of the leading Philosophical Radicals.

GERMANY'S INDUSTRIAL PARLIAMENT

Τ THE

THE NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL

1. Introduction

HE National Economic Council which began to function in the summer of 1920 is one of Germany's experiments in finding an instrument which would help solve her pressing economic and social questions. Moreover, it is a product, in a greatly modified form, of the Council movement which set in at the overturn of the imperial government. Originally the demands of the revolutionary forces, which had formed Workers and Soldiers Councils, were for the creation of a political council system patterned after the Russian Soviets. But as these ideas met with very determined opposition on the part of the trade unionists and Socialists, who had taken over governmental powers themselves, the advocates of the Council System were forced to surrender the greater part of their demands and satisfy themselves with a declaration of the Government that some form of Economic Council System, having no political functions, was to be instituted in Germany.

As the Government did not at once seriously set to work to create such a Council System, agitation continued and a renewed effort of the remaining Workers' and Soldiers' Councils to hold one big political demonstration, to force the hand of the Government and to prevent what seemed to them the loss of the fruits of the revolution, obliged the Government and with it the National Assembly to embody in Article 165 of the German Constitution the right of the workers to exercise control in the regulation of wages and working conditions and moreover to give them the right to participate in the entire economic development of the nation's productive forces.

To enable the workers to exercise these functions they were to be given legal representation in Works Councils, covering the single establishments, in District Works Councils, which would be a grouping of the Establishment Works Councils ac

cording to economic districts, and in a National Works Council. Aside from these various Works Councils representing primarily the workers' interests, the workers were to participate also in the Economic Councils which were to be formed by the District Works Councils together with the employers' representatives of a given district and be called District Economic Councils. These District Economic Councils joined together would form a National Economic Council.

Of the Council system which is outlined here up till today only the Establishment Works Councils have been definitely instituted by law. The National Economic Council which has been created and which is described here is not the superstructure of the Council System which was originally intended to be built up. It came into being through a Decree issued May 4, 1920, by the National Government and is provisional in nature until the final Economic Council is constituted.

The reasons for creating the National Economic Council before the other parts of the council program were realized were of a pressing nature. The enormous difficulties in which Germany found herself as a result of the war demanded unification of all the country's economic forces. If German life was to be brought back to normal it was urgent that the problems of economic restoration be taken out of the political atmosphere. The then newly elected Reichstag, however, was surcharged with political animosities which made it extremely difficult for the Government to obtain a working majority which would enable it to attack the pressing problems. The Government was criticized a good deal on the ground that in proposing economic ineasures it was not well informed about the real feeling of the people towards them and that it did not make an attempt to get the advice of those standing right in the midst of the economic and industrial life. The various economic committees

'The Works Council System as finally constituted is not quite the instrument of fundamental economic control and socialization which the advocates of the council idea had hoped they would get as a result of the promise of the Government. The Works Councils' functions are centered in the single establishment and larger powers of economic control have not been granted them. For details see an article by the writer, "The German Works Council System" in Administration, July, 1922.