The relative as well as absolute aggrandizement of the executive branch of the national government is the outstanding single fact in the political experience of the United States. The Presidency today is not only stronger in relation to Congress and the Supreme Court but its role in the whole life of the nation has become much larger than apparently envisaged by the Founders. This development, however, is not considered a departure from the original scheme of government because the Constitution is held to be a “living document.” The intermittent but cumulative growth of the Presidency has been absorbed into current constitutional theory on the general principle laid down by Justice Holmes deciding a question of federal-state relations: “This case before us must be considered in the light of our whole experience and not merely in that of what was said a hundred years ago.” This unity of theory and practice constitutes, indeed, the genius of American politics to which Professor Daniel Boorstin has applied the term “givenness.” The two components of this “givenness,” according to Professor Boorstin, are the idea of a preformed original theory given to the nation by the Founding Fathers and adequate to all its future needs, and the idea of an implicit theory forever embodied in American institutions. Combined, these two tenets produce a sense of continuity — “homogeneity,” “seamless web” — in which past and present, tradition and progress, constitutional law and political practice, are blended into that peculiar American optimism, at once reverent and practical. Since the Presidency participates in this “givenness,” it also constitutes an indestructible composite of constitutional interpretation and history. It is a “living institution.”

Pan-slavism is one of the elusive idea-concepts which can be easily defined. But the historian can hardly say how far they correspond to a political reality which exercises a decisive impact on the course of history. A similar contemporary ideaconcept is Pan-Africanism, propagated and commended by most Africans. So far it has failed to create a political or economic union. The only example of that kind, and that on a very minor scale, the Mali Federation, dissolved after a short existence. The same holds true of another similar concept, Pan-Scandinavianism, which is approximately as old as Pan-Slavism but better based on a much closer cultural and religious affinity.

Eleven years after his death, economists (strangely enough, the only ones who seem to care) still ponder the paradoxes of Joseph A. Schumpeter. While the contributions of the late Lord Keynes, not without intriguing paradoxes of their own, are being rapidly assimilated into the “common sense” of statesmen, Schumpeter, the only other truly great economist the twentieth century has produced, exerted no appreciable influence over public policy. Apart from a few misunderstood cliches, such as “creative destruction,” “obsolescence of entrepreneurial function,” and so on, his ideas have generated no “school” among young intellectuals. Indeed, it is doubtful that they ever will, even though Schumpeter is a profound and honest thinker in the tradition of Marx, Weber, and Tawney grappling with one of the crucial problems of our age: the innovating and growth capacities of various social systems under an advanced industrial technology.

In the antithesis of Western imperialism and colonial nationalisms and the still uncertain synthesis the United States has had a significant and in some ways a determining role. By the extension of its frontiers into the Caribbean and the Pacific at the turn of the century, the United States found itself an imperialist power. American imperialism consciously endeavored to bring what was best of the Western way of life to its colonial peoples. Nevertheless, it depended on the conventional instruments of military force and colonial-civil government imposed by the conqueror. For the United States the Philippines became the fittest subject for this Westernizing process for which Theodore Roosevelt was the outstanding spokesman and apologist. Under President Roosevelt's direction the work of civilizing a backward people received a full American expression, and from a consideration of that enterprise the temper of American imperialism may be sounded. Drawing from the Philippine experiment and from experience with the Caribbean countries Roosevelt combined practical judgments with certain intellectual and emotional attitudes to elaborate a comprehensive doctrine of imperialism.

Since 1918 the doctrine that the Arabs are a nation and that nationality is the basis of politics has come to be accepted by a very large majority of Arab political leaders and of at least the lay intellectuals. The espousal of this doctrine, by a people who are predominantly Moslem in religion, is a development of revolutionary significance, since for many centuries Moslems viewed the state in terms of religion and dynasty. Moslems have recognized the existence of distinct peoples, or nations, since the time of Mohammed. Indeed, Islam in its first century or so was the peculiar religion of the Arab nation, and to become a Moslem was to join the Arab nation as a dependent person. This system, however, proved unworkable, and in the end Islam became the supreme bond which superseded nationality.

It is well known that Gladstone entered Parliament in 1832 as a conservative and a Tory, and ended his Parliamentary career as leader of the Liberal Party. As late as 1839 Macaulay could call him “the rising hope of … stern and unbending Tories.” What was the reason for his change of position? Did he merely drift with Peel, or was there some positive principle which led him to liberalism? There is much in his notebooks to suggest the latter. It is the purpose of this brief article to discuss this change, and to examine the position which Gladstone came to accept in later life. It will also be necessary to relate his notion of liberty to the ideas of democracy and equality which he entertained. Although it cannot be claimed that Gladstone was a political philosopher, he did hold a series of principles and an understanding of them is essential for a correct interpretation of his actions as a statesman.