Inevitably, however, this aspect of the American Promise has undergone certain important changes since the establishment of our national independence.  When the colonists succeeded in emancipating themselves from political allegiance to Great Britain, they were confronted by the task of organizing a stable and efficient government without encroaching on the freedom, which was even at that time traditionally associated with American life.  The task was by no means an easy one, and required for its performance the application of other political principles than that of freedom.  The men who were responsible for this great work were not, perhaps, entirely candid in recognizing the profound modifications in their traditional ideas which their constructive political work had implied; but they were at all events fully aware of the great importance of their addition to the American idea.  That idea, while not ceasing to be at bottom economic, became more than ever political and social in its meaning and contents.  The Land of Freedom became in the course of time also the Land of Equality.  The special American political system, the construction of which was predicted in the “Farmer’s” assertion of the necessary novelty of American modes of thought and action, was made explicitly, if not uncompromisingly, democratic; and the success of this democratic political system was indissolubly associated in the American mind with the persistence of abundant and widely distributed economic prosperity.  Our democratic institutions became in a sense the guarantee that prosperity would continue to be abundant and accessible.  In case the majority of good Americans were not prosperous, there would be grave reasons for suspecting that our institutions were not doing their duty.

The more consciously democratic Americans became, however, the less they were satisfied with a conception of the Promised Land, which went no farther than a pervasive economic prosperity guaranteed by free institutions.  The amelioration promised to aliens and to future Americans was to possess its moral and social aspects.  The implication was, and still is, that by virtue of the more comfortable and less trammeled lives which Americans were enabled to lead, they would constitute a better society and would become in general a worthier set of men.  The confidence which American institutions placed in the American citizen was considered equivalent to a greater faith in the excellence of human nature.  In our favored land political liberty and economic opportunity were by a process of natural education inevitably making for individual and social amelioration.  In Europe the people did not have a fair chance.  Population increased more quickly than economic opportunities, and the opportunities which did exist were largely monopolized by privileged classes.  Power was lodged in the hands of a few men, whose interest depended upon keeping the people in a condition of economic and political servitude; and in this way a divorce