ADVANCED FORM OF STATE EVOLUTION Thus modern democratic national states represent the most advanced form of state Evolution. With ethnic and geographic unity they have a strong national basis; and, by combining local self-government and representation, they secure that adjustment of liberty and sovereignty which, even over large areas, may subserve the interests of both individual and society. PROF. RAYMOND G. GETTELL, Political Science, p. 64. Trinity College. MODERN AND ANCIENT GOVERNMENT Direct Representative government is comparatively modern. government of the democratic kind is ancient: and the latter was deliberately discarded for the former by the founders of our government. The framers of the Constitution were entirely familiar with the failure of direct democracy in a government of numerous population, and they were influenced by their knowledge of that failure in devising our own structure of representative government. HON. SAMUEL W. McCALL. Speech at Cedar Point, Ohio, July 12, 1911. HAMILTON AND JEFFERSON AGREED But when, scorning the arts of the demagogue, we look the facts squarely in the face, we must recognize frankly that in government there are certain functions which the people can not perform directly and which, therefore, in a popular government must be performed by representatives or delegates chosen by the people. And it is a fact that what the people do through their representatives or delegates, the people themselves do. If we can not have democratic government except on condition that all functions of government shall be exercised by the people themselves, democratic government becomes an impossibility. This was clearly recognized by the founders of the Republic. Indeed, the greatest achievement of the Constitutional Convention was the formulation of a plan of representative government in contrast with the system of direct popular government which was practiced in the republics of the ancient world. And Hamilton and Jefferson alike agreed that this devise of government by the people acting, not in person, but through their representatives, was the principal safe-guard of the rights of citizens and the firmest guarantee of the continuance of the Republic. Speech at Utica, Feb. 5, 1909. JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN. THE LEADING RAMS Speaking of the impossibility of the socialistic democracy, Dr. A. Schaffle, the distinguished German author says: "The leading rams of the modern democratic flock whom all the sheep follow would be the sole actual legislators, rulers and administrators, and would in all probability not be of the best and most capable, but the most thorough-going demagogues, the most successful flatterers of the many-headed monarch." Social Democracy, p. 123. GOVERNMENT BY TUMULT The civic assemblies grew larger, louder and less orderly; the business was carried on after a more passionate and tumultuous fashion, because the guidance of a superior spirit was absent, and because the entire multitude accordingly took a more direct part in the proceedings, and unhesitatingly displayed its momentary feelings -its favor and disfavor, its satisfaction and impatience. History of Greece, Vol. 3, p. 92. CURTIES. GOVERNMENT BY REPRESENTATIVES For let it be agreed that a government is Republican in proportion as every member composing it has equal voice in the direction of its concerns, (not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or a small township), but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods, and let us bring to the test of this canon every branch of our constitution. THOMAS JEFFERSON. Works, Vol. 15, p. 33. THE EVILS OF POPULAR ELECTIONS So was Rome destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, though those of Rome were sober disorders. They had nothing but faction, bribery, bread and stage plays to debauch them. We have the inflammation of liquor superseded, a fury hotter than any of them. There the contest was only between citizen and citizen, yet Rome was destroyed by the frequency of elections, and the monstrous expense of an unremitted courtship to the people. Thoughts on Discontent. EDMUND BURKE. THE UNITED STATES SYSTEM The system of government in the United States and in the several states is distinguished from a pure democracy in this respect, that the will of the people is made manifest through representatives chosen by them to administer their affairs and make their laws, and who are entrusted with defined and limited powers in that regard, whereas, the idea of a democracy, non-representative in character, implies that the laws are made by the entire people acting in a mass-meeting or at least by universal and direct vote. Representation is one of the very essentials of a Republican form of government. Page 28. BLACK'S CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. A REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT By the Constitution, a republican form of government is guaranteed to every State in the union, and the distinguishing feature of that form is the right of the people to choose their own officers for governmental administration and pass their own laws in virtue of the legislative power reposed in representative bodies, whose legitimate acts may be said to be those of the people themselves, but, while the people are thus the source of political power, their governments, National and State, have been limited by written constitutions, and they have thus thereby set bounds to their own power, as against the sudden impulses of mere majorities. U. S. Supreme Court, CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER. Duncan, 139 U. S., 449. ORIGIN OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERN MENT I begin with the Origin and Nature of the Representative System. This is an invention of modern times. In antiquity there were Republics and Democracies, but there was no Representative System. In Athens the people met in public Assembly, and directly acted for themselves on all questions, foreign and domestic. This was possible there, as the state was small and the Assembly seldom exceeded 5,000 citizens-a large town-meeting or mass-meeting as we might call it not inaptly termed, "that fierced emocratie of Athens." The American System, though first showing itself in Massachusetts and Virginia, found its earliest practical exemplification a few years later, in the Constitution of the United States. Works, Vol. 3, p. 232–241 CHARLES SUMNER. TRUE AND FALSE DEMOCRACY Jealousy of power honestly gained and justly exercised, envy of attainment or possession, are characteristics of the mob, not of the people; of a democracy which is false, not of a democracy which is true. False democracy shouts, Every man down to the level of the average. True democracy cries, All men up to the height of their fullest capacity for service and achievement. The two ideals are everlastingly at war. The future of this nation as the future of the world, is bound up with the hope of a true democracy that builds itself on Liberty. NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER. True and False Democracy p. 15. REPRESENTATION OUR INVENTION They, (the Ancients) knew no medium between a Democracy, (the only pure Republic, but impracticable beyond the limits of a town) and an abandonment of themselves to an aristocracy or a tyranny independent of the people. It seems not to have occurred that where the citizens cannot meet to transact their business in person, they alone have the right to choose the agents who shall transact it, and that in this way a republican government of a second grade of purity may be exercised over any extent of country. The full experiment of a government democratical, but representative, was and still is reserved for us. Works, Vol. 16, p. 65. THOMAS JEFFERSON. GOVERNMENT BY SHOUTS The manner of their election was as follows: The people being called together, some selected persons, were locked up in a room near the place of election, so contrived that they could neither see or be seen, but could only hear the noise of the assembly without, for they decided this, as most other affairs of moment, by the shouts of the people. This done, the competitors were not brought in and presented altogether but one after another by lot, and passed in order through the assembly without speaking a word. Those who were locked up had writing tablets with them in which they recorded and marked each shout by its loudness, without knowing in favor of which candidate each of them was made, but merely that they came first, second, third, and so forth. He who was found to have the most and loudest acclamations was declared senator duly elected. Lives, p. 92. PLUTARCH. IT IS THE MODERN METHOD Representation is the modern method by which the will of a great multitude may express itself through an elected body of men for deliberation in law making. It is the only practicable way by which a large country can give expression to its will in deliberate legislation. Give the suffrage to the people, let lawmaking be in the hands of their representatives, and make the representatives responsible at short periods to the popular judgment, and the rights of men will be safe, for they will select only such as will protect their rights and dismiss those who, upon trial, will not. True representation is a security against wrong and abuse in lawmaking. JOHN RANDOLPH TUCKER. PURE vs. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY Democracies are of two kinds.-pure, or direct, and representative, or indirect. A pure democracy is one in which the will of the state is formulated and expressed directly and immediately through the people acting in their primary capacity. A pure democracy is practical only in small states, where the voting population may be assembled for purposes of legislation and where the collective needs of the people are few and simple. In large and complex societies, where the legislative wants of the people are numerous, the very necessities of the situation make government by the whole body of citizens a physical impossibility. Introduction to Political Science. PROF. GARNER. GOVERNMENT BY SELECTED INTELLI GENCE A simple or pure democracy mixes ignorance and intelligence, folly and wisdom, vice and virtue, inexperience and experience, demagogy and statesmanship altogether in hopeless confusion and the bad neutralizes the good and pulls both the intellectual and moral standard down to the dead level of mediocrity, but when we engraft upon a pure democracy the representative system, we then enable the people to pick out men of character, experience, wisdom and statesmanship, wherever they can be found, and assemble them in a representative body-in a legislature or a convention, where they can act for the public good. A pure democracy, when reduced to the last analysis, means government by collective ignorance, while a representative democracy means government by selected intelligence. CHARLES H. BETTS. |