longer any need of a slave-class to give citizens leisure to frequent the public places and absorb political wisdom by the slow and crude methods of past times. There is no longer any danger of the popular assembly being broken up by a mob or carried off its feet by an impassioned demagogue; for the biggest crowd that gathers on election day consists of two or three policemen, half a dozen election officers, and a few citizens standing in line for a chance to vote one by one in the solitude of the voting-booth. Though electoral privileges be extended to the humblest laborer in the state, though the electorate be doubled by the extension of the suffrage to women, though more than half of the entire population of a great city be given the ballot, yet there is no congestion at the polls. In other words, the conditions that limited democracy in ancient times to the citizen-class of a little city-state and a century ago to the sparse population of a small New England town have been completely changed by the marvellous mechanical inventions of modern times, and especially by their intensive application in the last half century. Old things have passed away. All things have become new, except human nature, and even that has changed. Now it is the House of Representatives at Washington and the assemblies at the state capitals that are in danger of being swept off their feet by the rush of lobbyists and the noise of many people clamoring for favors from government. These representative assemblies have become so unwieldy as deliberative bodies that they have been driven to harness themselves with iron rules and submit themselves to guidance by tyrants whose powers Pisistratus himself would have envied. Every safeguard is required to keep these assemblies from being stampeded. There is much less danger of the people, acting through the ballot-box, being hurried into inconsiderate and ruinous action, for with the people the issues have been framed for weeks or months before the vote is cast. For weeks or months through the medium of the newspaper, by means of political meetings here and there and by conversation and argument, man with man, public opinion is crystallized until on election day it is quietly and clearly recorded in hundreds or thousands of precincts which together constitute the city, the state, or the nation. These new conditions, these new tools available for political use, have reopened the question of the practicability of a pure democracy. The unequalled results of the old democracy in Athens and of the newer democracy in the town-meeting invite us to try democracy in our American national and state governments, if we can see a method of applying it. The arguments that were conclusive against it under earlier conditions have no force at all now. To be sure, it is obvious that a "pure" democracy is not practicable even now, if we understand that term to mean a government that acts through the ballot-box exclusively. But such a democracy never was feasible under any conditions and never existed in fact. Even Athens had executive officials and the New England town has its board of selectmen. Certain functions of government were always delegated to chosen men. The extreme complexity of modern social and industrial conditions makes necessary a multiplicity of laws and ordinances. The delegation of the law-making power in part to representative assemblies is unavoidable. No modern advocate of democracy suggests anything else. But it is proposed, by the popular nomination and recall of public servants and by the enactment or rejection by ballot of proposed laws in which the people as a whole take a special interest, to supplement representative government by a partial revival of the spirit and methods of pure democracy. It is proposed by means of the Initiative, the Referendum, the Recall and the other modes of increasing the direct power of the people, to guarantee so far as possible the end which representative democracy has always pursued, though with halting step, namely, that the will of the people in political affairs, deliberately formulated and unmistakably expressed, shall prevail in so far as in the nature of things it can prevail. It must, of course, comply with the laws of nature, which set a limit to all governmental action. "Democracy in Grecian antiquity," says Grote, 'possessed the privilege, not only of kindling an earnest and unanimous attachment to the constitution in the bosoms of the citizens, but also of creating an energy of public and private action, such as could never be obtained under an oligarchy, where the utmost that could be hoped for was a passive acquiescence and obedience." "The Town meeting has been the most perfect school of self-government in any modern country," says James Bryce. We may add that only with the advent of the most modern tools of education and communication has it become possible to extend the spirit of the Athenian democracy and the New England town-meeting to the government of great cities and wide-reaching commonwealths. But with the implements of democracy that now lie at our door, we have a right to expect a great forward movement toward stability, justice, and public spirit in American political institutions. |