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Decentralization and Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

H. A. Innis
H. A. Innis*
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

This paper is concerned with the changes in types of power in the Atlantic basin following the discovery of America. Direct control from Europe under the French, Dutch, Spanish, and British Empires has gradually changed with emergence of independent states in North and South America and of the British Commonwealth of Nations. In Canada European institutions were more strongly entrenched and feudalism continued to exercise a powerful influence, latterly, for example, in the control of natural resources by the provinces. The provinces have become land-lords with great disparity of wealth varying with federal policy, technological change, and provincial policy. The changing disparity enhances the complexity of democracy in Canada.

The advantages of the British Empire in its struggle with the French Empire were in part a result of the implications of imperfect competition between drainage basins in the interior as contrasted with more effective competition between the maritime regions of the Atlantic seaboard. In the latter region, imperfect competition was reflected in the slowness with which adjustments were made between the West Country in England, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New England. In the interior of the continent competition was less effective in the struggle between traders of various nationalities or of the same nationality as it was carried on between drainage basins. Trunk rivers and tributaries with low heights of land between drainage basins facilitated the tapping of vast regions. The relative effectiveness of competition on the seaboard and in the interior of the continent had implications for the struggle of empire.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , August 1943 , pp. 317 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1943

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References

1 See Innis, H. A., “Imperfect Regional Competition and Political Institutions on the North Atlantic Seaboard” (University of Toronto Commerce Journal, 04, 1942, pp. 21–6).Google Scholar

2 Lawson, Murray G., Fur—A Study in English Mercantilism (Toronto, 1943), pp. vii–xx.Google Scholar

3 “Then Tom Corcoran (assistant to the President) offered me a little advice. The day of the printed word, he announced, was over. ‘You have no idea what a good thing it is for your soul to have to address yourself to a big radio audience. You've got to clarify your meaning, make things simple, reduce them to their ultimate essentials if you want to get them over to a big audience, because human beings are a hell of a lot stupider than you would ever think’ ” ( Moley, Raymond, After Seven Years, New York, 1939, p. 355 Google Scholar).

4 See Crozier, J. B., History of Intellectual Development on the Lines of Modern Evolution, III (London, 1901), pp. 258–9, on parties in France.Google Scholar

5 “A similar revolution of ideas is very rare in the West, and indeed experience shows that innovating legislation is connected not so much with Science as with the scientific air which certain subjects, not capable of exact scientific treatment, from time to time assume. To this class of subjects belonged Bentham's scheme of Law-Reform, and, above all, Political Economy as treated by Ricardo. Both have been extremely fertile sources of legislation during the last fifty years” ( SirMaine, Henry Sumner, Popular Government, London, 1885, p. 146 Google Scholar). “We Englishmen pass on the Continent as masters of the art of government; yet it may be doubted whether, even among us, the science, which corresponds to the art, is not very much in the condition of Political Economy before Adam Smith took it in hand” (ibid., p. 58). “Popular Government and Popular Justice were originally the same thing. The ancient democracies devoted much more time and attention to the exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction than to the administration of their public affairs; and, as a matter of fact, popular justice has lasted longer, has had a more continuous history, and has received much more observation and cultivation than popular government” (ibid., pp. 89-90). On the problems of government in Great Britain, and, one might add, the more acute problems of government in Canada, see the discussion of the machinery developed in the United States to check the usurpation of the Cabinet (ibid., pp. 196 ff.).