The particular friends of freedom, such as Hamilton and the French “doctrinaires,” have always believed that both civil and political liberty depended on the denial of popular Sovereignty and the rigid limitation of the suffrage.  Of course, a democrat cannot accept such a conclusion.  He should doubtless admit that the possession of absolute Sovereign power is always liable to abuse; and if he is candid, he can hardly fail to add that democratic favoritism is subject to the same weakness as aristocratic or royal favoritism.  It tends, that is, to make individuals seek distinction not by high individual efficiency, but by compromises in the interest of useful popularity.  It would be vain to deny the gravity of this danger or the extent to which, in the best of democracies, the seekers after all kinds of distinction have been hypnotized by an express desire for popularity.  But American statesmen have not always been obliged to choose between Hamilton’s unpopular integrity and Henry Clay’s unprincipled bidding for popular favor.  The greatest American political leaders have been popular without any personal capitulation; and their success is indicative of what is theoretically the most wholesome relation between individual political liberty and a democratic distribution of effective political power.  The highest and most profitable individual political distinction is that which is won from a large field and from a whole people.  Political, even more than other kinds of distinction, should not be the fruit of a limited area of selection.  It must be open to everybody, and it must be acceptable to the community as a whole.  In fact, the concession of substantially equal political rights is an absolute condition of any fundamental political bond.  Grave as are the dangers which a democratic political system incurs, still graver ones are incurred by a rigidly limited electoral organization.  A community, so organized, betrays a fundamental lack of confidence in the mutual loyalty and good faith of its members, and such a community can remain well united only at the cost of a mixture of patronage and servility.

The limitation of the suffrage to those who are individually capable of making the best use of it has the appearance of being reasonable; and it has made a strong appeal to those statesmen and thinkers who believed in the political leadership of intelligent and educated men.  Neither can it be denied that a rigidly restricted suffrage might well make in the beginning for administrative efficiency and good government.  But it must never be forgotten that a limited suffrage confines ultimate political responsibility, not only to a number of peculiarly competent individuals, but to a larger or smaller class; and in the long run a class is never to be trusted to govern in the interest of the whole community.  A democracy should encourage the political leadership of experienced, educated, and well-trained men, but only on the express condition that their