J. Allen Smith

“ If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by a regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. ”

“ It is not surprising, then, that the masses should feel that they have received too little benefit from this marvelous material progress. For just in proportion as the old political system has survived, with its privileged classes, its checks on the people and its class ascendency in government, the benefits of material progress have been monopolized by the few. Against this intrusion of the old order into modern society the spirit of democracy revolts. It demands control of the state to the end that the product of industry may be equitably distributed. ”

“ When, as in England, the party which carries the election obtains complete and undisputed control of the government, the sense of responsibility is ever present in those who direct it. If in the event of its success it is certain to be called upon to carry out its promises, it can not afford for the sake of obtaining votes to make promises which it has no intention of keeping. But when the party, even though successful at the polls may lack the power to enforce its policy, it can not be controlled by a sense of direct responsibility to the people. ”

“ And when the people had come to venerate it as the most perfect embodiment of the doctrine of popular sovereignty that the intelligence of man could devise, it was but natural that they should acquiesce in the proposal to make the state governments conform more closely to the general plan of that instrument. In view of the widespread sentiment which amounted to a blind and unthinking worship of the Constitution, it is not surprising that the political institutions of the general government should have been largely copied by the states. ”

“ The democracy of the people, however, was a matter of faith rather than knowledge, a mere belief in the right of the masses to rule rather than an intelligent appreciation of the political agencies and constitutional forms through which the ends of popular government were to be attained. Unless this is borne in mind, it is impossible to understand how the Constitution, which was regarded at first with distrust, soon came to be reverenced by the people generally as the very embodiment of democratic doctrines. ”

“ Here we find the real explanation of that widespread disregard of law which characterizes American society to-day. We are witnessing and taking part in the final struggle between the old and the new—a struggle which will not end until one or the other of these irreconcilable theories of government is completely overthrown, and a new and harmonious political structure evolved. Every age of epoch-making change is a time of social turmoil. ”

“ We have clung tenaciously to the system of checks and balances with all its restraints on popular control. The evils of municipal government are not the evils of democracy, but the evils of a system which limits the power of the majority in the interest of the minority. ”

“ The divine right of kings never ran a more prosperous course than did this unquestioned prerogative of the Constitution to receive universal homage. The conviction that our institutions were the best in the world, nay more, the model to which all civilized states must sooner or later conform, could not be laughed out of us by foreign critics, nor shaken out of us by the roughest jars of the system. ”

“ The practical impossibility of removing a public official by means of impeachment proceedings has made the executive and the judicial veto thoroughly effective, since it has deprived Congress of all power to punish by removing from office those officials who thwart its purpose. It has made the President and the Supreme Court much stronger than the House of Representatives—a result which the framers of the Constitution no doubt desired. ”

“ There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men, acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid. ”

“ Both progress and retrogression are a process of adaptation, and their cause must be sought, not in the principle of competition itself, but in the general external conditions to which it enforces conformity. Success, then, is a matter of adaptation to the environment, or the power to use it for individual ends—not the power to improve and enrich it. The power to take from, is nature's sole test of fitness to live; but the power to enrich is a higher test, and one which society must enforce through appropriate legislation. ”

“ Liberty was the watchword of society—the panacea for all social ills. The Western world was breaking through the old system of restraints under which the individual had been fettered in religion, politics and business. A new conception of the state, its duties and its functions, had been evolved. Mere human law was being discredited. Philosophers, distrusting the coercive arrangements of society, were looking into the nature of man and the character of the environment for the principles of social organization and order. ”

“ And yet scarcely ever do our text-books or magazine articles dealing with present political evils even so much as allude to this most important fact—the one, indeed, on which hinges our whole system of business fraud and political corruption. We often hear the opinion expressed by people of more than ordinary intelligence that the public immorality so much in evidence in this country is the natural and inevitable result of popular government. This view is industriously encouraged by the conservative and even accepted by not a few of those whose sympathies are with democracy. ”

“ Everywhere the movement toward democracy has been and is now being energetically resisted by those who fear that thoroughgoing popular government would deprive them of economic or political privileges which they now enjoy. Let us not deceive ourselves by thinking that the old system of class rule has been entirely overthrown. No fundamental change in government or any other social institution ever comes about suddenly. Time, often much time, is required for those intellectual and moral readjustments without which no great change in social institutions can be made. ”

“ When, in a democratic political society, the well-matured, long and deliberately formed will of the undoubted majority can be persistently and successfully thwarted, in the amendment of its organic law, by the will of the minority, there is just as much danger to the state from revolution and violence as there is from the caprice of the majority, where the sovereignty of the bare majority is acknowledged. The safeguards against too radical change must not be exaggerated to the point of dethroning the real sovereign. ”

“ There is a vast difference, however, between a system under which the people constitute a mere check upon the government and one which gives them an active control over legislation. It is the difference between a limited monarchy or aristocracy on the one hand and a government by the people themselves on the other. ”

“ The unlimited authority which the state government had over taxation and its power to restrict or abridge property rights were viewed with alarm by the wealthy classes, who felt that any considerable measure of democracy would be likely to deprive them of their time-honored prerogatives. To guard against this danger the Constitution sought, in the interest of the classes which dominated the Federal Convention, to give the widest possible scope to private property. It prohibited private property in nothing—permitting it, as originally adopted, even in human beings. ”

“ The desire of the employing class for cheap labor has been responsible for the greatest dangers which menace this country to-day. It was the demand for cheap labor which led to the importation of the African slave and perpetuated the institution of slavery until, with the voluntary immigration of foreign labor, it was no longer an economic necessity from the standpoint of the employing class. Indeed the very existence of slavery, by discouraging immigration, tended to limit the supply of labor, and by so doing, to cripple all enterprises in which free labor was employed. ”

“ But any proposal to deprive the minority of this power must encounter the determined opposition of the party machine and the various private interests which now prosper at the expense of the people. These opponents of political reform are continually declaiming against the corruption and incapacity of the people and trying to make it appear that a government can be no better than its source—those who elect the public officials. That a government is not likely to be better than the people whom it represents may be admitted. ”

“ And when we remember that only a century ago every government in the Western world was avowedly organized on the basis of minority rule, we can readily understand that society has not yet had sufficient time to outgrow the influence of the old political order.
No one can discuss intelligently the question of political morality if he ignores the effect of this struggle between the old system of minority domination and the new system of majority rule. ”

“ The supporters of minority rule no doubt often feel that the whole plan and purpose of the democratic movement is revolutionary—that its ultimate aim is the complete overthrow of all those checks designed for the protection of the minority. The only effective means which they could employ to retard the progress of the popular movement involved the use of money or its equivalent in ways that have [Pg 377] had a corrupting influence upon our national life. Of course this need not, and as a rule does not, take the coarse, crude form of a direct purchase of public officials. ”

“ Every privilege granted or right conferred—no matter by what means or on what pretence—being made inviolable by the Constitution, the government is frequently found stripped of its authority in very important particulars, by unwise, careless, or corrupt legislation; and a clause of the Federal Constitution, whose purpose was to preclude the repudiation of debts and just contracts, protects and perpetuates the evil. ”

“ It is not only absurd but manifestly unjust that a small state like Nevada should have as much representation in the controlling branch of Congress as New York with more than one hundred and seventy-one times as much population. A more inequitable distribution of representation it would be difficult to imagine; yet this evil could not be removed even by constitutional amendment, since this matter does not come within the scope of the amending power, unless the state or states affected by such proposed change should all give their assent. ”

“ Here modern democracy was born; here we find the physical and social conditions which facilitate interchange of thought and concerted action on the part of the people. Moreover, the government of the city is more directly and immediately related to the citizens than is the government of state or nation. It touches them at more points, makes more demands upon them and is more vitally related to their everyday life and needs than either state or national government. ”

“ Our present system in its practical operation is not a democracy. It is not truly representative, but misrepresentative. To prevent this evil—this betrayal of public trust in the interest of the minority—is the aim of the direct primary. That it will go far toward breaking the power of the machine may be safely predicted, and that it will be generally adopted as soon as the people realize its significance there is scarcely room for doubt. ”

“ It is true that many who have been most influenced by this spirit of distrust toward popular government would be unwilling to admit that they are opposed to majority rule—in fact, they may regard themselves as sincere believers in democracy. This is not to be wondered at when we consider that throughout our history under the Constitution the old and the new have been systematically jumbled in our political literature. ”

“ We encounter its malign influence every time an effort is made to secure any adequate regulation of railways, to protect the people against the extortion of the trusts, or to make the great privileged industries of the country bear their just share of taxation. But the chief concern of those in whose interest the party machine is run is to defeat any popular attack on those features of the system which are the real source of the great power which the minority is able to exert. ”