Historian, jurist, diplomat, and member of Parliament, James Bryce (1838-1922) lived one of those remarkably full and fruitful nineteenth-century public lives that remain a wonder today. He served as ambassador to the United States from 1907 to 1913 and was one of the most knowledgeable, perceptive, and sympathetic interpreters of American civilization since Tocqueville. Bryce's writings reveal a constant and deep concern with the nature and maintenance of democracy. Hindrances to Good Citizenship, first presented as a series of lectures at Yale in 1908, addresses the special...