people who vote the party ticket, but subserviency to those interests which dominate the party machine. The choice of candidates is largely made in the secret councils of the ruling minority and the party conventions under color of making a popular choice of candidates merely ratify the minority choice already made. Popular elections under such a system do not necessarily mean that the people have any real power of selecting public officials. They merely have the privilege of voting for one or the other of two lists of candidates neither of which may be in any true sense repre sentative of the people or their interests.

But in nothing is the lack of popular control over the party more clearly seen than in the party platforms. These are supposed to provide a medium for the expression of public opinion upon the important questions with which the government has to deal. Under a political system which recognized the right of the majority to rule, a party platform would be constructed with a view to ascertaining the sense of that majority. Does the platform of the American political party serve this purpose? Does it seek to crystallize and secure a definite expression of public opinion at the polls, or is it so constructed as to prevent it? This question can best be answered by an examination of our party platforms.

The Constitution, as we have seen, was a reaction against and a repudiation of the theory of

government expressed in the Declaration of Independence, although this fact was persistently denied by those who framed it and urged its adoption. The high regard in which popular government was held by the masses did not permit any open and avowed attempt to discredit it. The democracy of the people, however, was a matter of faith rather than knowledge, a mere belief in the right of the masses to rule rather than an intelligent appreciation of the political agencies and constitutional forms through which the ends of popular government were to be attained. Unless this is borne in mind, it is impossible to understand how the Constitution, which was regarded at first with distrust, soon came to be reverenced by the people generally as the very embodiment of democratic doctrines. In order to bring about this change in the attitude of the people, the Constitution was represented by those who sought to advance it in popular esteem as the embodiment of those principles of popular government to which the Declaration of Independence gave expression. The diligence with which this view of the Constitution was inculcated by those who were in a position to aid in molding public opinion soon secured for it universal acceptance. Even the political parties which professed to stand for majority rule and which should therefore have sought to enlighten the people have

one hand the enactment of laws which that majority favors, and by permitting on the other hand the enactment of laws to which it is opposed, certainly does not allow public opinion to exercise an effective control over the proceedings of the House.

As a foreign critic observes, "the House has ceased to be a debating assembly; it is only an instrument for hasty voting on the proposals which fifty small committees have prepared behind closed doors. . . . At the present time it is very much farther from representing the people than if, instead of going as far as universal suffrage, it had kept to an infinitely narrower franchise, but had preserved at the same time the freedom, fullness, and majesty of its debates."1

Boutmy, Studies in Constitutional Law, pp. 98-99.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PARTY SYSTEM

The political party is a voluntary association which seeks to enlist a majority of voters under its banner and thereby gain control of the government. As the means employed by the majority to make its will effective, it is irreconcilably opposed to all restraints upon its authority. Party government in this sense is the outcome of the efforts of the masses to establish their complete and untrammeled control of the state.

This is the reason why conservative statesmen of the eighteenth century regarded the tendency towards party government as the greatest political evil of the time. Far-sighted men saw clearly that its purpose was revolutionary; that if accomplished, monarchy and aristocracy would be shorn of all power; that the checks upon the masses would be swept away and the popular element made supreme. This would lead inevitably to the overthrow of the entire system of special privilege which centuries of class rule had carefully built up and protected.

When our Constitution was framed responsible party government had not been established in

England. In theory the Constitution of Great Britain recognized three coördinate powers, the King, the Lords, and the Commons. But as a matter of fact the government of England was predominantly aristocratic. The landed interests exerted a controlling influence even in the House of Commons. The rapidly growing importance of capital had not yet seriously impaired the constitutional authority of the landlord class. Land had been until recently the only important form of wealth; and the right to a voice in the management of the government was still an incident of land ownership. Men as such were not entitled to representation. The property-owning classes made the laws and administered them, officered the army and navy, and controlled the policy of the government in every direction.

"According to a table prepared about 1815, the House of Commons contained 471 members who owed their seats to the goodwill and pleasure of 144 Peers and 123 Commoners, 16 government nominees, and only 171 members elected by popular suffrages."1

As the real power behind the government was the aristocracy of wealth, the English system, though nominally one of checks and balances, closely resembled in its practical working an unlimited aristocracy.

1

Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, Vol. I, p. 20.