Part 4 (2/2)

He added:

”Give all the power to the many and they will oppress the few. Give all the power to the few and they will oppress the many. Both ought, therefore, to have the power that each may defend itself against the other.”

Perhaps the att.i.tude of the members is thus best expressed by James Madison, in the 10th of the Federalist papers: ”A pure democracy, by which I mean a State consisting of a small number of citizens, who a.s.semble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. Such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, and have often been found incompatible with the personal security and rights of property, and have generally been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

Undoubtedly, the framers of the Const.i.tution in thus limiting popular rule did not take sufficient account of the genius of an English-speaking people. A few of their number recognized this. Franklin, a self-made man, believed in democracy and doubted the efficacy of the Const.i.tution unless it was, like a pyramid, broad-based upon the will of the people.

Colonel Mason, of Virginia, who was also of the Jeffersonian school of political philosophy, said:

”Notwithstanding the oppression and injustice experienced among us from democracy, the genius of the people is in favour of it, and the genius of the people must be consulted.”

In this they were true prophets, for the American people have refused to limit democracy as narrowly and rigidly as the framers of the Const.i.tution clearly intended. The most notable ill.u.s.tration of this is the selection of the President. It was never contemplated that the people should directly select the President, but that a chosen body of electors should, with careful deliberation, make this momentous choice. While, in form, the system persists to this day, from the very beginning the electors simply vote as the people who select them desire. It should here be noted that Thomas Jefferson, the great Democrat and draftsman of the Declaration of Independence, was not a member of the convention. During its sessions he was in France. He was instrumental in securing the first ten Amendments and the subsequent adaptation of the Const.i.tution to meet the democratic instincts of the American people is largely due to his great leaders.h.i.+p.

Moreover, the spirit of representative government has greatly changed since the Const.i.tution was adopted. The ideal of the earlier time was that so n.o.bly expressed by Edmund Burke in his address to the electors of Bristol, for the framers believed that a representative held a judicial position of the most sacred character, and that he should vote as his judgment and conscience dictated without respect to the wishes of his const.i.tuents. To-day, and notably in the last half century, the contrary belief, due largely to Jefferson's political ideals, has so influenced American politics that the representatives of the people, either in the legislature or the executive departments of the government, are considered by the ma.s.ses as only the mouthpieces of the people who select them, and to ignore their wishes is regarded as virtually a betrayal of a trust and the negation of democracy.

For this change in att.i.tude there has been much justification, for in my country, as elsewhere, the people do not always select their best men as representatives, and, with the imperfections of human nature, there has been so much of ignorance and, at times, venality, that the instinct of the people is to take the conduct of affairs into their own hands. On the other hand, this change of att.i.tude has led, in many instances, to government by organized minorities, for, with the division of the ma.s.ses into political parties, it is easy for an organized minority to hold the balance of power, and thus impress its will upon majorities. Time may yet vindicate the theory of the framers that the limit of democracy is the selection of true and tried representatives.

2.

The second and most novel principle of the Const.i.tution is its dual form of Government.

This did const.i.tute a unique contribution to the science of politics. This was early recognized by de Tocqueville, one of the most acute students of the Const.i.tution, who said that it was based ”upon a wholly, novel theory, which may be considered a great discovery in modern political science.”

Previous to the Const.i.tution it had not been thought possible to divide sovereignty, or at least to have two different sovereignties moving as planets in the same orbit. Therefore, all previous federated governments had been based upon the plan that a league could only effect its will through the const.i.tuent States and that the citizens in these States owed no direct allegiance to the league, but only to the States of which they were members. The Const.i.tution, however, developed the idea of a dual citizens.h.i.+p. While the people remained citizens of their respective States in the sphere of government which was reserved to the States, yet they directly became citizens of the central government, and, as such, ceased to be citizens of the several States in the sphere of government delegated to the central power; and this allegiance was enforced by the direct action of the central government on the citizens as individuals. Thus has been developed one of the most intricately complex governmental systems in the world.

At the time of the adoption of the Const.i.tution this division of jurisdiction was quite feasible, for, geographically, the various States were widely separated, and the lack of economic contact made it easy for each government to function without serious conflict. The framers, however, did not sufficiently reckon with the mechanical changes in society that were then beginning. They did not antic.i.p.ate, and could not have antic.i.p.ated, the centripetal influences of steam and electricity which have woven the American people into an indissoluble unit for commercial and many other purposes. As a result many laws of the Federal Government, in their incidences in this complex age, directly impinge upon rights of the State governments, and vice versa, and the practical application of the Const.i.tution has required a very subtle adaptation of a form of government which was enacted in a primitive age to a form of government of a complex age.

Take, for example, the power over commerce. According to the Const.i.tution, the Federal Government had plenary power over foreign commerce and commerce between the States, but the power over commerce within a State was reserved to State governments. This presupposed the power of Government to divide commerce into two water-tight compartments, or, at least, to regard the two spheres of power as parallel lines that would never meet; whereas with the coming of the railroad, steams.h.i.+p and the telegraph commerce has become so unified that the parallel lines have become lines of interlacing zigzags. To adapt the commerce clause of the Const.i.tution to these changed conditions has required, in the highest degree, the constructive genius of the Supreme Court of the United States, and, in a series of very remarkable decisions, which are contained in 256 volumes of the official reports, that great tribunal has tried to draw a line between inter-State and domestic commerce as nearly to the original plans of the framers as it was possible; but obviously there has been so much adaptation to make this possible that if Was.h.i.+ngton, Franklin, Madison and Hamilton could revisit the nation they created they would not recognize their own handiwork.

For the same reason, the dual system of government has been profoundly modified by the great elemental forces of our mechanical age, so that the scales, which try to hold in nice equipoise the Federal Government on the one hand and the States on the other, have been greatly disturbed. Originally, the States were the powerful political ent.i.ties, and the central government a mere agent for certain specific purposes; but, in the development of the Const.i.tution, the nation has naturally become of overshadowing importance, while the States have relatively steadily diminished in power and prestige.

These inevitable tendencies in American politics are called ”centralization,” and while for nearly a century a great political party bitterly contested its steady progress, due to the centripetal influences above indicated, yet the contest was long since abandoned as a hopeless one, and the struggle to-day is rather to keep, so far as possible, the inevitable tendency measurably in check.

Nevertheless, it would be erroneous to suggest that the dual system of government is a failure. It still endures in providing a large measure of authority to the States in their purely domestic concerns, and, in a country that extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, whose northern border is not very far from the Arctic Circle, and whose southern border is not many degrees from the Equator, there are such differences in the habits, conventions, and ideals of the people that without this dual form of government the Const.i.tution would long since have broken down. It is not too much to say that the success with which the framers of the Const.i.tution reconciled national supremacy and efficiency with local self-government is one of the great achievements in the history of mankind.

3.

The third principle was the guaranty of individual liberty through const.i.tutional limitations.

This marked another great contribution of America to the science of government. In all previous government building, the State was regarded as a sovereign, which could grant to individuals or cla.s.ses, out of its plenary power, certain privileges or exemptions, which were called ”liberties.” Thus the liberties which the barons wrung from King John at Runnymede were virtually exemptions from the power of government. Our fathers did not believe in the sovereignty of the State in the sense of absolute power, nor did they believe in the sovereignty of the people in that sense. The word ”sovereignty” will not be found in the Const.i.tution or the Declaration of Independence. They believed that each individual, as a responsible moral being, had certain ”inalienable rights” which neither the State nor the people could rightfully take from him.

This conception of individualism, enforced in courts of law against executives and legislatures, was wholly new and is the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of American const.i.tutionalism. As to such reserved rights, guaranteed by Const.i.tutional limitations, and largely by the first ten amendments to the Const.i.tution, a man, by virtue of his inherent and G.o.d-given dignity as a human soul, has rights, such as freedom of the Press, liberty of speech, property rights, and religious freedom, which even one hundred millions of people cannot rightfully take from him, without amending the Const.i.tution. The framers did not believe that the oil of anointing that was supposed to sanctify the monarch and give him infallibility had fallen upon the ”mult.i.tudinous tongue” of the people to give it either infallibility or omnipotence. They believed in individualism. They were animated by a sleepless jealousy of governmental power. They believed that the greater such power, the greater the danger of its abuse. They felt that the individual could generally best work out his own salvation, and that his constant prayer to Government was that of Diogenes to Alexander: ”Keep out of my sunlight.” The worth and dignity of the human soul, the free compet.i.tion of man and man, the n.o.bility of labour, the right to work, free from the tyranny of state or cla.s.s, this was their gospel. Socialism was to them abhorrent.

This theory of government gave a new dignity to manhood. It said to the State: ”There is a limit to your power. Thus far and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.”

4.

<script>