IS OUR REPUBLIC A FAILURE?[1]
A Gentleman prominently connected with the diplomatic service of a European nation said to me a few years ago: "You must remember that your republic is even now merely an experiment. A century is nothing in the history of a nation. And it is yet to be proved that a democratic government on a large scale is a practicable thing."
I think we must admit that so far he was quite right. He was convinced, it might be added, that already signs of failure are obvious. He has no faith that the experiment will succeed. He insists that democracy, as in the days of Caesar and Cromwell and Napoleon, must lead to autocracy.
Is he right in this also?
We must bear in mind that our government is not merely a republic. Holland under the stadtholders was that, and so was Venice. But both were profoundly aristocratic. Each was in fact ruled by a small oligarchy. But with us the basis of government is popular. We are a democracy—a democratic republic.
Of course it is not intended by that to imply that with us all the people share in government. From the nature of the case that is and always must be a physical impossibility. Even altogether aside from the question of woman suffrage, it is obvious that there will always be a large number of children and an appreciable number of criminals and persons of disordered and weak mind who should not be entrusted with political power. The real difference, then, between what we call an oligarchy and what we call a democracy is that in the former the political people are few, in the latter the political people are many. Of course in a modern state by the political people we mean those
- ↑ Delivered before the members of The University of Chicago, July 4, 1895.
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