The same principle holds with the republics developing at the close of the middle age, in Italy, in the towns of the Hanseatic League and elsewhere.  Always the freedom achieved was for a city, a group or a class, never for all the people.  Our dream, on the contrary, is to take all the men and women in the land, ultimately in the world, and help them, through the free and cooperative activity of each with all the rest, on toward life, liberty, happiness, intelligence—­all the ends of life that are worth while.  If we demand life for ourselves, we ask it only in harmony with the best life for all.  We want no special privilege, no benefit apart, bought at the price of the best welfare of humanity.  “We,” unfortunately, does not yet mean all of us, but it does signify an increasing multitude, rallying to this that is the standard of to-morrow.

A third transformation, at least equally important with these, is in the invention, for it is no less, of representative government.  Political thinkers, such as John Fiske, have tried to make us understand what this invention means:  we do not yet realize it.  The development of representative government is the cause, first of all, of the tremendous expansion of the area over which we apply democracy.  Plato, in the Laws, limits the size of the ideal state—­the one realizable in this world—­to 5040 citizens.  Why?  Well, the exact number has a certain mystical significance, but the main reason is, Plato could not imagine a much larger body of citizens than 5000 meeting together in public assembly and fulfilling the functions of citizenship.

We have extended democracy over a hundred millions of population, dwelling on the larger part of a continent; and if one travels North, South, East, West, to-day, one is impressed that, in spite of unassimilated elements, everywhere men and women are proud, first of all, of being American citizens, and only in subordinate ways devoted to the section or community to which they belong.  This has been made possible by the invention and development of representative government.

That is not all:  it is representative government that takes the sting out of all the older criticisms of democracy.  Plato devotes one of the saddest portions of his Republic to showing how in a brief time, democracy must inevitably fall and be replaced by tyranny.  With the democracy Plato knew this was true.  It was impossible for Athens to protect and make permanent her constitution.  She might pass a law declaring the penalty of death on any one proposing a change in the constitution.  It did no good.  Let some demagogue arise, sure of the suffrage of a majority of the citizens:  he could call them into public assembly, cause a repeal of the law, and make any change in the constitution he desired.  There was no way to prevent it.