In this way, they have effectually run counter to the wiser teachings of the federal forefathers. The inevitable tendency of democracies, our author shows, is to concentrate all powers into the hands of the legislative body, for this body emanating directly from the people, is most subject to their immediate influence. This concentration, while it singularly prejudices the good conduct of public affairs, strengthens the despotism of the majority.

This despotism of the majority is a fearful peril in the eyes of De Tocqueville, as well as of Sismondi, and other modern publicists. "When," says our author, "I see the right and faculty of doing everything conceded to any power whatever, whether you call it people or sovereign, democracy or aristocracy, whether exercised in a monarchy or a republic, I say there is the germ of tyranny, and I desire to live under other laws. I regard, therefore, as impious and detestable the maxim, that in the matter of government the majority of the people have the right to do everything; and yet I place in the will of the majority the origin of all powers. * * What is a majority taken collectively, except an individual who has opinions, and most frequently interests, contrary to another individual named the minority. Now, if you admit that a man clothed with omnipotence may abuse it to the prejudice of his adversary, why do you not admit the same thing in the case of a majority? Men combining together do not change their character. The power of omnipotence which I refuse to a single individual of my species, I will never concede to many." The aim of the legislator should be so to combine the elements of government as to temper the will of the majority with justice to the minority. The machinery should be so arranged that the action of the majority shall be brought to bear upon the minority calmly, slowly, understandingly, impartially. "Suppose," says our author, "a legislative body composed in such a manner that it represents the majority without being necessarily the slave of its passions; an executive power which has a force proper to itself; and a judiciary independent of the other two powers; you will still have a democratic government, but with scarcely any chance for tyranny." Vol.

2, p. 147. Why may we not, in reality, have such a govern

ment?

The regulation of the action of the majority upon the minority was the subject of profound thought to the statesmen who urged the formation, and secured the adoption of the union. It has been entirely lost sight of by the statesmen of the day who control the present workings of the general government. The effort, on the contrary, seems to be to see how unbearable legislation can be made for the minority. As early as the 20th of December, 1787, Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to Mr. Madison, suggested one remedy, which would also tend to diminish the evils of the instability of legislation. He suggests that the interval of a year be interposed between the presentation of a measure and its final passage, unless it receive the support of two-thirds of both houses of the legislature; tax laws, which operate equally on the majority and the minority, and measures essential to the progress of government, being, of course, excepted from the rule. Hamilton in the Federalist, No. 73, and Madison in the Federalist, No. 62, discuss the subject with their usual ability.

Our author is of opinion that there must be "a social power superior to all others placed somewhere," and he concedes, as we have seen, that this must be in the will of the majority as the "origin of all power." The will of the majority is, consequently, in his view, a necessity of the democratic organization. But he insists that it should be tempered and controlled by constitutional obstacles to prevent hasty and tyrannical action. Sismondi, on the contrary, does not admit the right of the majority to govern-the majority of every community being exactly that class which ought least to be entrusted with power, the ignorant and the vicious. Accordingly, while he admits that every class ought to be represented in the government, he insists that the franchise ought to be so distributed as to throw the controlling power into the hands of those who represent the intelligence and property. De Tocqueville concedes the general truth of Sismondi's objection, and admits that the problem for the statesman is to discover some means of inducing the majority to select proper

representatives, and to give the latter freedom of individual action. The remedy he suggests, as I have already stated, is to multiply the degrees of election. "I have no hesitation in averring," he says," that I see in the double electoral degree the only means of safely entrusting the use of political franchise to all classes of the people." The "double degree" was adopted in the federal constitution in the case of the president and of the senators in Congress, but the benefits have, in a great measure, been lost in the actual practice. The same system was adopted for the selection, of members of the legislative body by the French constitutions of the 13th of September, 1791, and the 22d of August, 1795, and was revived after the restoration of the Bourbons. The practical effect, Sismondi says, was to render the people indifferent to the elections. Under Louis Phillipe and the Republic of 1848, the vote of the people was by "scrutin de liste," the ballot of a list of names to represent the whole nation, the selections for the list being, of course, made by the government, or a party, not by the voter. Under the second empire the election was of a representative for a definite district and population by universal suffrage.

Among the suggestions which have been made upon the subject of regulating the will of the majority and the workings of universal suffrage, it seems strange to me that so little stress has been laid upon graduation in office, and restriction upon the selection of candidates. The former is a practical suggestion familiar to every person in the ordinary affairs of life, where each young man is expected to perform the duties of a lower place before he undertakes a higher, and which was actually carried out in the Roman republic. And, as to the second, nothing is clearer than that it is easier to narrow the circle from which official selections are made than to limit the right of suffrage.

As a general rule, in the early days of Rome, a citizen could not aspire to a higher office until he had filled a lower. Age and experience were thus secured to all the more important positions. Why may not the same system be adopted in our modern democratic governments? If we can secure as servants of the people men who have become qualified by pre

vious training, one great evil would be remedied. "Nothing," says our author, "can be more pernicious than the example of sudden and unmerited elevation presented to the regards of a democratic people. It gives the final impulse over the preccipice to which everything tends to plunge the human heart. It is, then, in times of skepticism and equality, that care should especially be taken that the mere favor of the people, or of the executive chief, should not take the place of knowledge and services. It is particularly desirable that each step should appear to be the fruit of an effort, so that no elevation shall be too easy, and that ambition shall be constrained to fix its regards on the goal long before it is reached." Too true, and woefully neglected in our best of all possible republics, where sudden success even to the highest offices is the rule, and gradual progress the exception.

It would not be difficult to add other requisites to official candidacy. The qualifications of education, or property, or professional training, in addition to official apprenticeship or graduation, might be added. What a vast advantage would it be if no one could be elected to the house of representatives of our state legislatures, unless he were thirty years of age, settled in life, of good education, and of at least five years' standing in some profession, trade, or honorable occupation; nor to the senate unless he had served one term in the house, or held some other designated office; nor to the office of governor until he had served both in the house and senate, or been a judge of one of the superior courts for a certain number of years, or had served in the Congress of the Union, or attained a certain rank in the army by actual service. If the principle of restriction or graduation were once recognized, it would be easy to adapt the requirements to meet the varying exigencies of the actual. Experience, too, would soon point out the proper mode of making exceptions to the general rule, as, for example, by a two-thirds vote of the legislature, or a plebiscite of the whole people.

As an incentive, too, to devotion to the public service, there should be some honorable and permanent positions, with adequate compensation, for those who have attained the highest

grades. Why should not our ex-governors and ex-presidents become permanent members of the higher branch of the legislature, as senators for the state or Union at large, the exgovernor of the state senate, the ex-president of the United States senate? Or they might become permanent members of an executive council to which some of the duties of the Roman censorship might be attached. In times of intense political excitement, common to all governments, and too frequent in republics, to whom could the people look, with such entire confidence, for advice and guidance as to those who have filled the measure of their own highest ambition, and their country's glory.

Thinkers differ as to De Tocqueville's success in his attempt to ascertain the effect of democratic institutions on human intellect, sentiments, and morals; and, e converso, the influence which democratic ideas and convictions exercise upon political society. His reasoning is based almost wholly on the laws of mind, irrespective of locality, nationality, climate, and other extraneous or adventitious circumstances. He distinctly excludes these data from his problem. "I am well aware," he says, "that many of my contemporaries have thought that peoples are never here below masters of themselves, and that they obey necessarily a certain, I know not what, insurmountable and unintelligent force which springs from anterior events, from race, from soil, or climate. These are false and cowardly doctrines, which can only produce feeble men and pusillanimous nations. Providence has not created the human race either entirely independent, or altogether slave. It traces, it is true, around each man a fatal circle from which he cannot escape; but within its vast limits, man is powerful and free; so of nations. The nations of our day cannot prevent equality of conditions, but it depends upon them whether this equality shall carry them to slavery or liberty, to civilization or barbarism, to prosperity or misery." These are noble words worthy of our author and his theme. But it cannot be denied, although the influence of the causes alluded to may have been exagger ated by a class of writers (Montesquieu, our author's eminent French predecessor, and the lamented Buckle, for example),