Download or read book The Empire Review and Magazine, 1914, Vol. 26 (Classic Reprint) written by Clement Kinloch-Cooke and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2016-11-29 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Empire Review and Magazine, 1914, Vol. 26 Were it too audacious to express a hope that, for the salvation of a democracy which now, like the demoniac of old times, wounds and rends itself - which is possessed by innumerable evil spirits that give it no peace but incessantly impel it toward self destruction - some kind of a college or university for statesmen might be established in every country where representative institu tions exist? Such an establishment, of course, would be main tained at the public charge and be controlled, indirectly, by the State. The teaching staff would be most carefully selected (foreign professors, free from local attachments or prejudices, might well be accorded preference), liberally remunerated, 'and placed entirely outside both political and clerical in uences. Admission would be by competitive examination, as vacancies from time to time arose: and the fees, if any, charged for in struction and maintenance should be so small as to enable the poor as well as the rich to participate in the benefits provided. Obviously, only a limited number of students could be received, as is the case in the ordinary training colleges for the Army and Navy. The existence of hordes of unemployed professors of politics in a country would be most disturbing to the general tranquillity, and would mean rampant demagogism. By the means just sketched the State would literally, in the late Lord Sherbrooke's familiar phrase, educate its masters. It would ensure, without violating one whit the fundamental principles of freedom, that each future legislator should be a man of good moral character and should possess the priceless gift of knowledge. The demagogue and other birds of prey would disappear, and the ignorant elector would be protected against the results of his own ignorance. Were but one quarter of the funds now foolishly employed to attract needy and incompetent men to enter public life devoted to training far worthier legislators, the human race would be spared a multitude of quite avoidable ills from which it now sufiers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."