THE WORKING OF

THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

I

PURPOSE to examine some parts of the experience of the American democracy, with the intention of suggesting the answers to certain theoretical objections which have been urged against democracy in general, and of showing in part what makes the strength of the democratic form of government.

For more than a hundred years there has been among civilized nations a decided set of opinion toward democratic institutions; but in Europe this set has been determined rather by unfavorable experience of despotic and oligarchic forms of government than by any favorable experience of the democratic form. Government by one and government by a few have been tried through many centuries, by different races of men, and under all sorts of conditions; but neither has ever succeeded -not even in England-in producing a reasonably peaceful, secure, and also happy society. No lesson upon this subject could be more forcible

than that which modern Europe teaches. Empires and monarchies, like patriarchies and chieftainships, have doubtless served their turn; but they have signally failed to realize the social ideals —some ancient and some modern in origin — which have taken firm hold of men's minds since the American Revolution. This failure extends through all society, from top to bottom. It is as conspicuous in the moral condition of the upper classes as in the material condition of the lower. Oligarchies call themselves aristocracies; but government by the few has never really been government by the best. Therefore mankind tends to seek the realization of its ideals in broad-based forms of government.

It can hardly be said that Europe has any experience of democracy which is applicable to a modern state. Gallant little Switzerland lives in a mountain fastness, and exists by the sufferance of powerful neighbors, each jealous of the other. No lessons for modern use can be drawn from the transient city democracies of ancient or medieval times. The city as a unit of government organization has gone forever, with the glories of Athens, Rome, and Florence. Throughout this century a beneficent tendency has been manifested toward the formation of great national units. Witness the expansion of Russia and the United States, the creation of the German empire, the union of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, and the unification of Italy. At least, within these great units prevail a common peace and an unrestricted trade. The

blessings which result from holding vast territories and multitudes under one national government are so great that none but large governments have any future before them. To succeed, democracy must show itself able to control both territory and population on a continental scale; therefore its methods must be representative - which means that they are necessarily deliberative, and are likely to be conservative and slow. Of such government by the many, Europe has no trustworthy experience, either in ancient or in modern times. The socalled democracies of Greece and Rome were really governments by a small caste of free citizens ruling a multitude of aliens and slaves: hasty and tyrannical themselves, they naturally prepared the way for tyrants. Yet when all the world were slaves, that caste of free citizens was a wonderful invention. France, since the Revolution, has exhibited some fugitive specimens of democratic rule, but has had no stable government of any sort, whether tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy. In short, such experience as Europe has had of socalled democracies-with the exception of admirable Switzerland- is worse than useless; for it is thoroughly misleading, and has misled many acute observers of political phenomena.

In this absence of available European experience, where can mankind look for trustworthy evidence concerning the practical working of democratic institutions? Solely to the United States. The Australasian colonies will before long contribute valuable evidence; but at present their population

is small, and their experience is too recent to be of great value to students of comparative politics. Yet it is upon experience, and experience alone, that safe conclusions can be based concerning the merits and the faults of democracy. On politics, speculative writing-even by able men like Sir George Cornewall Lewis and Sir Henry Maine-is as perilous as it is on biology; and prophecy is still more dangerous. To the modern mind, ideal states like Plato's Republic, Sir Thomas More's Utopia, and Saint Augustine's Civitas Dei, are utterly uninteresting-particularly when they rest upon such visionary postulates as community of goods and community of wives and children. The stable state must have its roots in use and wont, in familiar customs and laws, and in the inherited habits of successive generations. But it is only in the United States that a well-rooted democracy upon a great scale has ever existed; and hence the importance of accurate observation and just judgment of the working of American democratic institutions, both political and social. Upon the success of those institutions rest the best hopes of the world.

In discussing some parts of our national experience, I intend to confine myself to moral and intellectual phenomena, and shall have little to say about the material prosperity of the country. The rapid growth of the United States in population, wealth, and everything which constitutes material strength is, indeed, marvelous; but this concom

itant of the existence of democratic institutions in a fertile land, rich also in minerals, ores, oil, and gas, has often been dilated upon, and may be dismissed with only two remarks: first, that a great deal of moral vigor has been put into the material development of the United States; and secondly, that wide-spread comfort ought to promote rather than to hinder the civilizing of a people. Sensible and righteous government ought ultimately to make a nation rich; and although this proposition cannot be directly reversed, yet diffused well-being, comfort, and material prosperity establish a fair presumption in favor of the government and the prevailing social conditions under which these blessings have been secured.

The first question I wish to deal with is a fundamental one: How wisely, and by what process, has the American people made up its mind upon public questions of supreme difficulty and importance? Not how will it, or how might it, make up its mind; but how has it made up its mind? It is commonly said that the multitude, being ignorant and untrained, cannot reach so wise a conclusion upon questions of state as the cultivated few; that the wisdom of a mass of men can only be an average wisdom at the best; and that democracy, which in things material levels up, in things intellectual and moral levels down. Even De Tocqueville says that there is a middling standard of knowledge in a democracy, to which some rise and others descend. Let us put these speculative opinions, which have so plausible a sound, in contrast