INTRODUCTION.
The study of politics is just now (1908) in a curiously unsatisfactory position.
At first sight the main controversy as to the best form of government appears to have been finally settled in favour of representative democracy.

Forty years ago it could still be argued that to base the sovereignty of a great modern nation upon a widely extended popular vote was, in Europe at least, an experiment which had never been successfully tried.

England, indeed, by the 'leap in the dark' of 1867, became for the moment the only large European State whose government was democratic and representative.

But to-day a parliamentary republic based upon universal suffrage exists in France without serious opposition or protest.

Italy enjoys an apparently stable constitutional monarchy.
Universal suffrage has just been enacted in Austria.