Modern Democracies - In Two Volumes, Vol. II

Philip, King of Macedon, was wont to boast that he could take any city into which he could drive an ass laden with gold. Many statesmen from Philip's time down to our own have spoken to the like effect. So long as private property exists, there will be rich men ready to corrupt, and other men, rich as well as poor, ready to he corrupted, for "the love of money is the root of all evil." This has been so under all forms of government alike. The House of Commons in the days when Walpole, looking round its benches, observed, "All these men have their price," was no worse than were most of the Jacobin leaders among the French revolutionaries...
s-from Chapter LXIX: "The Money Power in Politics"

This 1921 study of democracy in action-presented in two volumes-is not only an important examination of the state of the free world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it's a vital reminder, as democracy continues to struggle to fruition around the globe, of history as an ongoing story.

Volume II covers:

the decline of legislatures
the executive in a democracy
democracy and foreign policy
the judiciary
the relation of central to local government
the money power in politics
democracy compared with other forms of government
the future of democracy
and democracy at work in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

In 1921, William H. Taft said of Bryce, "no man in the world today is better fitted to discuss modern democracies... [His] encyclopedic knowledge of history, made vivid and practical by his actual observations and continued studies, give him a peculiar facility for discussing the present state of modern democracies."


British historian VISCOUNT JAMES BRYCE (1838-1922) attended the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Oxford. He is best known for his scholarship of the Holy Roman Empire. His popular works include Studies in History and Jurisprudence (1901) and Studies in Contemporary Biography (1903).