Insofar as government performs service for us, it must have an organization for that purpose, with competent leadership.  And if it is not to interfere unduly with freedom of action or personal liberty, the people must have an organization by which to maintain control over it.  Thus there must be an organization to ensure efficient service, and there must be an organization to ensure democracy, or popular control.  If both organizations are effective, we have an efficient democracy, toward which we have been striving through all our history, but which we have not yet completely attained.

A government may be efficient in performing service for the people without being democratic.  In fact, it may be easier to get efficient service under an autocratic government.  Germany before the war illustrated this.  But we believe that a government may be both efficient and democratic.  This depends upon competent leadership and popular control; and both of these depend upon education (Chapter xix).

In the remaining pages of this book we shall consider both the organization of our government for service and that for popular control.  In this chapter we shall examine some of the methods by which we seek to control government, or to be self-governing.

DIRECT SELF-GOVERNMENT

The people of a community may govern themselves by direct action or indirectly through representatives, just as a group of farmers may build their own schoolhouse or church, or employ someone to do it for them.  When English colonists settled New England, geographical conditions and other reasons led them to form small, compact communities, in which it was easy to assemble frequently at the meetinghouse to discuss matters of community concern and to agree upon, rules, or laws, to regulate them.  This local government by “town meeting” has persisted in many New England “towns,” or “townships,” to the present day.

REPRESENTATIVE SELF-GOVERNMENT

This direct action of the people in the New England town is for the purpose of making the laws only.  When it comes to the enforcement of these laws, it is necessary to delegate the authority to someone.  The town meeting could make a law against permitting hogs to run at large, but it chose someone, a “hog reeve,” to see that the law was observed.  When the community is large it is found more convenient to choose representatives also to make the laws.  Thus each Massachusetts town had its representative in the lawmaking assembly of the colony as a whole.  This representative system of government now prevails in our cities, counties, states, and nation.

DIRECT SELF-GOVERNMENT THROUGH CONSTITUTIONS