For eighteen years that was the Pilgrim's only government. The members constituted the legislature and were frequently convened to decide also executive and judicial questions. It was a pure democracy, but later as the colony spread the representative system was found necessary. It led the way to the American system of written constitutions. It did not attempt, however, to define the rights of man and hence was only the germ of the American Constitution. But it was thought out, written, and signed 70 years before Locke's "Treatises on Government"; 142 years before Rousseau's "Contrat social," and 30 years before the "Agreement of the People," which was too liberal even for Cromwell. The Dutch Union of Utrecht of 1579 was not a constitution.* "The Constitution of the United States," Bryce says, "drafted in 1787 and set to work in 1789, may be deemed the greatest single contribution ever made to Government as an applied science." 1

A written constitution is an American institution.

It is with

out precedent in the history of the world and every American is and has a right to be proud of it. It protects him, his life, liberty, and property, against the state and even against a majority of his fellow citizens. Without it America would not be America.

(2) Popular Sovereignty and a Republic. Cooley says: "In America the leading principle of constitutional liberty has from the first been, that the sovereignty reposed in the people.” 2 Popular sovereignty existed in the Greek cities, but there the laws were made by the people direct and that system was possible only where the population was small. The republican form of government was not known. Here again Cooley says, "By republican government is understood a government by representatives chosen by the people; and it contrasts on one side with a democracy, in which the people or community as an organized whole wield sovereign powers of government, and on the

*See p. 92, infra.

other with the rule of one man, as king, emperor, czar, or sultan, or with that of one class of men, as an aristocracy." Rome knew of the representative system, but did not adopt it, probably because the representatives from outside would outnumber those from Rome itself. The result was that Rome became an unregenerate mob, incapable of governing the republic or repelling its enemies. Switzerland had the representative plan on a narrow basis, but the country was small and was no test of a republic on a gigantic and uniform scale. Holland had had some features of a republic, but by 1776 it had gone back practically to monarchy. England had a representative system, but it was a "rotten borough" system and not popular sovereignty. Hence when in 1787 America boldly proclaimed and established popular sovereignty in the form of a republic, and when in fact the astonishing Constitution expressly guaranteed to every one of its States "a republican form of government"— an American institution had arisen, popular sovereignty by a republic, not an unbridled democracy, not an uncontrolled rule by the majority, but a majority controlled by a constitution. Judge Cooley here says, "So far then from the government being based on unlimited confidence in majorities, a profound distrust of the discretion, equity and justice of their rule is made evident in many precautions and checks, and the majority is in fact trusted with power only so far as is absolutely essential to the working of republican institutions."2 Lord Acton, the great historian, said: "Whilst England was admired for the safeguards with which, in the course of many centuries, it had fortified liberty against the power of the crown, America appeared still more worthy of admiration for the safeguards which, in the deliberations of a single memorable year, it had set up against the power of its own sovereign people." John Adams summarized the curbs very well and his summary is stated by Cooley as follows:

"First, the States are balanced against the general government. Second, the House of Representatives is balanced against the Senate, and the Sen

ate against the House. Third, the executive authority is in some degree balanced against the legislature. Fourth, the judiciary is balanced against the legislature, the executive, and the state governments. Fifth, the Senate is balanced against the President in all appointments to office, and in all treaties. Sixth, the people hold in their own hands the balance against their own representatives by periodical elections. Seventh, the legislatures of the several States are balanced against the Senate by sexennial elections." 1

There is another check and balance, the greatest of all, namely, the public sentiment of an intelligent and conservative people. This is not created nor disturbed by tumultuous gatherings, as in the ancient Greek city democracies. And even those Greek democracies were not so bad as painted. Sidgwick, a believer in monarchy, says that in democracy on the whole there has been “a remarkable maintenance of liberty in the strict sense of individual liberty," and he proceeds to say that "The tyranny of the majority,' which seemed to Tocqueville and Mill so important a danger of the coming democracy of Europe, certainly does not appear as a marked characteristic of the Demos of Athens." 2 As to the charge that in Greece the rich were oppressed with unequal taxation and plundered by prosecutions, he says this may have been true, but "there is no sign that it went to such an extent as to scare rich men away from Athens, and interfere with its commercial and industrial prosperity.' 19 3 He says the practice of throwing extra tax burdens on the rich was old and there is no sign that it was made worse by extreme democracy. The corruption and tyrannous misconduct of office-holders certainly existed, but he doubts "whether it was in any degree a distinctive feature of democracy.'

The whole world acknowledges that a successful republic in a vast country is an American institution and the whole world has been and is copying it. For weal or for woe it is here to succeed or fail. To America all eyes turn to see what we do with it. If we fail, the world goes backward. If we succeed, the glory will be that of America and America alone.

1

(3) Universal Suffrage. Professor Holcombe says that in the 18th century "Not one man in a hundred in Great Britain voted for members of Parliament, and elections came only after long intervals." In 1780 out of between seven and eight millions of inhabitants of England and Wales only 214,000 had the right to vote and 6000 of them were able to elect a majority of the House of Commons, by reason of the "rotten boroughs." Adams says, "During the eighteenth century not only did not one Englishman in fifty possess a vote, but from 1701 until after the American Revolution there was not a single general election held to decide a public question." 2

Neither did the American colonies give every man a vote. Property qualifications existed in all thirteen colonies and in addition a religious qualification in some of them. But after the Revolution universal suffrage gradually was adopted, excepting as to the negro, who was excluded in all of the states except New York and the New England states, other than Connecticut. The Western states particularly were free in granting every man a vote. The East started the movement; Vermont in 1785; New Hampshire and Kentucky in 1792; Georgia in 1798; Maryland in 1810; Indiana in 1816; Maine in 1819, and New York in 1826. After 1817 no state came into the Union with a property or tax-paying restriction on voting. Europe with slow and halting foot and against great opposition has followed. In England in 1832 the franchise was given to the middle classes, and in 1867 and 1885 to the great bulk of the people on a household basis; in Germany in 1867 and 1871; in Spain from 1869 to 1877 and reëstablished in 1890; in Belgium in 1894; in France in 1848; in Italy in 1881 and 1888; in Holland in 1848 and 1896 with some restrictions.

So also as to woman suffrage. America has led the way and all Europe will have to follow. The Western states in America first tried the experiment. By 1918 thirteen states west of the Mississippi had given the vote to women, and two east of the

Mississippi, namely, New York in 1917 and Michigan in 1918. Wyoming gave it in 1869; Colorado in 1893; Idaho and Utah in 1896; Washington in 1910; California in 1911; Kansas, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona in 1912; South Dakota in 1913, and Montana in 1914. In 1920 the Amendment to the Constitution was passed whereby "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Meantime in England in 1917 women were granted the franchise and 6,000,000 women thereby became entitled to vote, and in 1918 they were granted the right to sit in Parliament. Denmark granted woman suffrage in 1915.

This American institution of universal franchise is better known in Europe than all other American institutions combined. It has revolutionized Europe and Asia. It is the dawn of a new civilization. Whether that civilization can survive industrialism is a problem for America to solve. Universal suffrage certainly has broken down the political and social barriers erected by power-holding classes in the past. It has produced the stupendous economic results which now, however, bid fair to be a Frankenstein. It has not always worked well in governing cities where most of the problems are business problems, nor has it worked at all in the South where the negro was given the ballot, now practically eliminated by confining the vote to those who can read and understand the Constitution.

On the other hand, it has produced a distribution of wealth never before known and may be the means of a conservative and gradual transformation of the economic structure, which all thinkers think about but which is the problem of the age. Certain it is that men and women with votes have less inclination to remedy wrongs by violence, revolution, and the establishment of a privileged ruling class, than men and women who have no remedy but violence. The danger is that such voting power may be used for spoliation of the rich, as predicted by Macaulay.