The Decline of Popular Government
ACCORDING to two of the most prominent Russian writers, Tolstoi and Gorki, says The Independent, the recent Jewish massacre of Kishinef came as a result of the instruction given by the Russian Church and state. The Russian autocracy, adds The Independent, is at present “the greatest existing menace to the peace and welfare of the world. The world will breathe easier when perhaps a revolution shall give a good degree of popular government to Russia.” But popular government is not in the ascendancy in the world to-day. Two republics have but recently been blotted out in South Africa, a war of conquest has been successfully waged in the Philippines, Finland is being crushed by the czar, and during this same period of time only one new republic has been established in the earth—the so-called republic of Cuba, which, as is well-known, is really a dependency of the United States, the latter country having a naval station on each side of the island, and virtually exercising a protectorate over it. The spirit of the times is not such, either here or elsewhere, as tends to the exaltation of the doctrine of individual rights.