THE TREND TO AN AMERICAN

DEMOCRACY

BY JOHN BRITTAN CLARK

NOTHING connected with the recent all too quiet celebration of the birth of the American Constitution was worthy of more universal serious attention and emphasis than the pronouncement by the Citizenship Committee of the American Bar Association: "The Constitution of the United States, as originally written and interpreted, created a republic, or representative democracy."

It would have been much better had the words "a representative democracy" been omitted from that statement. While absolutely true if rightly understood, they will almost certainly be misunderstood and be thought identical with "a democracy", and so unintentionally give support and comfort to the serious mistake and strong tendency in public feeling today. "A representative democracy" is one thing; "a democracy" is an entirely different thing. If "a representative democracy" is what the founders of the Constitution intended, "a democracy" is the very thing they feared and sought to make impossible in every way they could devise. There can be no doubt of this. Of their number two, Madison and Hamilton, were designated spokesmen and interpreters of the work of the Constitutional Convention. Writing in The Federalist, Madison said:

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretical politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their professions, their opinions and their passions.

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking. ... The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are first, the designation of the government in the

latter to a small number of citizens selected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government. . . . The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be less likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation it may well happen that the public voice pronounced by the representatives of the people will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves convened for the purpose. . . . Hence it clearly appears that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy consists in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and to schemes of injustice. . . . In fine, it consists in the greater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority. . . . The true distinction between these forms is that in a democracy the people meet and exercise the government in person. In a republic they assemble and administer it by their respective agents. The first question that offers itself is whether the general form and aspect of the government be strictly republican. . . . It is evident that no other form will be reconcilable with the genius of the American people.

So far as Mr. Madison was concerned, a republic as opposed to a democracy was the form of government framed by the Constitution.

On September 18, 1803, Hamilton wrote to Pickering:

The plan of a Constitution which I drew up while the Convention was sitting and which I communicated to Mr. Madison . . . was predicated upon these bases:

1. That the political principles of the people of this country would endure nothing but republican government.

2. That in the actual situation of the country, it was in itself right and proper that the republican theory should have full and fair trial.

3. That to such a trial it was essential that the government should be so constructed as to give all the energy and stability reconcilable with the principles of that theory.

These were the genuine sentiments of my heart and upon them I acted.

Mr. Hamilton could not have said more plainly that the government intended by the Constitution was a republic, not a democracy. Granting this, which it would seem impossible for any truly informed to deny, one is not a little disturbed by the loose way in which the word "republic" is put aside and the

word "democracy" substituted by many prominent, able writers and speakers today. In an address to a great audience in New York city Lloyd George expressed his fear of "peril to democracy". He said: "The United States, France and Great Britain are the only great democracies remaining in the world today. The fate of humanity," he declared, "and of civilization would depend upon these three nations clinging to their democracy. Where a people is sound, a democratic form of government is always best." Evidently Mr. George is directly at variance with the Constitution of the land in which he was speaking. He did not realize that he was. In common with countless others, he was using loosely the word "democracy", thinking of one thing and speaking of another. In view of what the framers of the Constitution unmistakably state, one is forced to wonder at such statements as "America was founded on the principle of democracy", or "make the world safe for democracy". This last is the very thing no true American should desire. Rather, it should be his desire and effort to make the world the most dangerous possible for democracy. If one claims, as Mr. Beck suggests, that the Declaration of Independence sought to "make the world safe for democracy", this was, however, in only the preamble of the Declaration and was a reflection of the tide of political idealism which influenced people everywhere to some degree from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the French Revolution, when “the sentimental and often hysterical abstractions of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Encyclopædists held sway". What the framers of the Constitution tried to do was not to make the world safe for democracy but to make democracy safe for the world. And they sought to do this by taking the direct power out of the hands of the mass-something which inheres in a democracy and which it vehemently demands—and, while giving the mass adequate representation, imposing upon it salutary restraints in the exercise of its power.

The present all too loose use of the word "democracy", the emphasis given it today, meets with favorable response because it has so appealing a sound to people jealous of their real or imagined and, as it seems to them, menaced rights and privilege; especially in an age such as the present of social and industrial

unrest. The many make no distinction between "a representative democracy" and "a democracy", or between "a democracy" and "a republic". This is not surprising when not a few encyclopædias and dictionaries make the terms synonymous. Did people realize they were not synonymous; did people realize just what "a democracy" is,—a thing the framers of the Constitution clearly realized,-they would as emphatically oppose as now they applaud the plea for democracy. Doubtless, this appeal is made by true lovers of their country who really think the fundamental original principle of the American Government is endangered. The effect is the same, notwithstanding. One of the truest and saddest things in life is that ignorance does not nullify its results. But it is too charitable to attribute to honest ignorance this wide and loud propaganda for democracy. It is more true, if less kind, to attribute it to a determined purpose and effort of many able people to do away with the republic in favor of a democracy. These know the popular failure to distinguish between the two, and they purposely play upon this failure. They recognize clearly the distinction. They know well just what they are doing. They recognize that between them and their goal is the Constitution, and do not hesitate to ask, "Shall the conditions of today be under the control of a piece of paper because it happens to be a century or so old?"

This tendency to substitute a democracy for a republic began with the gradual and progressive reduction of a representative to the grade of a mere delegate, changing him from one chosen by his constituency to give his experience, his brain, his conscience and his best service on all public matters coming to him as a representative, to one who tries to express on all public matters the opinion of the hour, transitory and unsound as that may be, or the opinion of his constituents who are not in a position to know much that he knows connected with the matters that come up for decision. It is commonly assumed that the first duty of a Senator or Representative in Congress is to his constituency. It is not. This is fundamentally wrong. But this is the characteristic principle of a democracy. This is why many national legislators think of nothing but safeguarding the interests of their Districts instead of thinking primarily and chiefly of the interests

of the country as a whole. A national legislator is chosen to serve his country, not any one section of it. He is paid by the United States, not by his particular District. True, we have sacred authority for saying "say not that the former times were better than these". It is true, nevertheless, that in "former times" there were able and revered legislators who refused to obey the dictates of their Districts when these were opposed to their personal conviction of what was best for the country. They felt that their constituency was the United States, not this or that State, this or that District. But so strong today is the trend to a democracy that any man seeking public office or reëlection on this assumption of his office is threatened with defeat at the polls. A democracy insists that its representative must take his constituents' advice, must obey their instructions, must be their messenger bearing their message. In other words, the mass shall directly have the governing power-the very thing the Constitution seeks to prevent.

Starting with this altered conception of representation, other trends to substitute a democracy for a republic are apparent everywhere. When the head of a great industrial organization openly urges its members to disregard the pronouncements of the Supreme Court, he gives a flagrant demonstration of the trend to a democracy in the proposed substitution of mass opinion for the judicial function of the republic. When, as often today, the settlement of crucial public difficulties is left to a commission, there is the transference to the mass of the administrative function of the republic. Possibly the most apparent demonstration just now of the trend to a democracy is given by the Ku Klux Klan, an organization large in numbers and widely spread over the country, committed to the principle of taking matters out of the Government's hands into its own hands and settling them according to its own standards.

And, despite the contradiction it will undoubtedly cause, the primary system of American politics plays directly into this trend to a democracy. The primaries notoriously do not represent majorities, but the minorities which by them insert and plant their radical and disruptive views. Some of those who will make the present Senate the most vociferous on record were