CHAPTER I. GENERAL INFORMATION. The Hawaiian Islands are situated in the North Pacific Ocean and lie between longitudes 154° 40' and 160° 30' West, and latitudes 22° 16' and 18° 55' North. They are thus on the very edge of the tropics, but their position in mid-ocean and the prevalence of the northeast trade wind gives them a climate unequalled by any other portion of the globe—a perpetual summer... more...

PREFACE It is a matter of common observation that during the opening years of the twentieth century there has been, in many portions of the civilized world, a substantial quickening of interest in the principles and problems of human government. The United States is happily among those countries in which the phenomenon can be observed, and we have witnessed in recent times not only the organization of societies and the establishment of journals... more...

Chapter I. Mankind fitted for Society, and for Civil Government and Laws. §1. Mankind are social beings. They are by nature fitted for society. By this we mean that they are naturally disposed to associate with each other. Indeed, such is their nature, that they could not be happy without such association. Hence we conclude that the Creator has designed men for society. It can not, therefore, be true, as some say, that the savage state is... more...

GIST The Crowd is my Hero. The Hero of this book is a hundred million people. I have come to have the feeling—especially in regard to political conventions, that it might not be amiss to put forward some suggestions just now as to how a hundred million people can strike—make themselves more substantial, more important in this country, so that we shall really have in this country in time a hundred million people who, taken as a... more...

INTRODUCTION My purpose in this volume is to advocate a definite scheme of self-government for Ireland. That task necessarily involves an historical as well as a constructive argument. It would be truer, perhaps, to say that the greater part of the constructive case for Home Rule must necessarily be historical. To postulate a vague acceptance of the principle of Home Rule, and to proceed at once to the details of the Irish Constitution, would be... more...

CHAPTER I GENERAL INTRODUCTION The revolution which broke out in China on the 10th October, 1911, and which was completed with the abdication of the Manchu Dynasty on the 12th February, 1912, though acclaimed as highly successful, was in its practical aspects something very different. With the proclamation of the Republic, the fiction of autocratic rule had truly enough vanished; yet the tradition survived and with it sufficient of the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TREATY OF PEACE "The United States of America"! It was in the Declaration of Independence that this name was first and formally proclaimed to the world, and to maintain its verity the war of the Revolution was fought. Americans like to think that they were then assuming "among the Powers of the Earth the equal and independent Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them"; and, in view of their subsequent... more...

The purpose of this book is twofold. We realise to-day, as never before, that the fortunes of the world, and of every individual in it, are deeply affected by the problems of world-politics and by the imperial expansion and the imperial rivalries of the greater states of Western civilisation. But when men who have given no special attention to the history of these questions try to form a sound judgment on them, they find themselves handicapped... more...

HUMAN NATURE. Truths of the physical order may possess much external significance, but internal significance they have none. The latter is the privilege of intellectual and moral truths, which are concerned with the objectivation of the will in its highest stages, whereas physical truths are concerned with it in its lowest. For example, if we could establish the truth of what up till now is only a conjecture, namely, that it is the action of... more...

There is a great difficulty in the way of a writer who attempts to sketch a living Constitution—a Constitution that is in actual work and power. The difficulty is that the object is in constant change. An historical writer does not feel this difficulty: he deals only with the past; he can say definitely, the Constitution worked in such and such a manner in the year at which he begins, and in a manner in such and such respects different in... more...