AN APOSTATE DEMOCRACY. 657 



without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its juris- 

 diction the equal protection of the laws." Of the pressing need of 

 this restraint, no better proof is to be had than the mass of litigation 

 involving it that has come before the courts since its adoption. 



But liberty and justice, the sole warrant of any community to the 

 title of a free democracy, are not born of a constitution, however 

 ingeniously provided with checks and balances or devoutly wor- 

 shiped in leader and speech. Hardly had the new Government 

 been launched before there was another of the countless demonstra- 

 tions that the wisest resolution is no certain bar to the greatest folly 

 — that boast as the political quack may of the efficacy of his machin- 

 ery, it has neither potency nor virtue beyond the people that work it. 

 Despite the sacredness of the Constitution, so piously worshiped by 

 the party in power, it was remorselessly wrenched to add Louisiana to 

 the Federal domain. With like disregard of its inviolable principles 

 of freedom, the alien and sedition laws were passed in a time of 

 peace; and without the excuse of war, the embargo was established. 

 Under the Nemesis of political intrigue, the electoral provisions of 

 the new Magna Cliaria were permitted to lapse without a twinge 

 of remorse. Long before the republic, so solemnly ordained " to 

 establish justice " and to " promote the general welfare," had passed 

 the first half century of its existence, its citizens had discovered how 

 it could be converted into a powerful instrument of private greed. 

 The tariffs of 1816, 1824, and 1828 were progressive applications of 

 the ethics of the robber barons. The American spoils system, an in- 

 stitution sacred to the memory of the most democratic of democrats, 

 was only a metamorphosis in the interest of the politician of the 

 monarchical system of official favorites. 



Despite these violations of liberty and justice, the theory and 

 practice of government for the first seventy years of the republic 

 were in the main a realization of Jefferson's ideal. If it had not 

 always been " wise," it had been " frugal." If it had some- 

 times taken " from the mouth of labor the bread it had earned," 

 it had restrained " men from injuring one another," and left 

 " them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry 

 and improvement." * Under this regime of freedom, the Ameri- 

 can people wrought the greatest industrial miracle of history. 

 They won a continent from savagery, and turned forests and 

 prairies into farms and gardens; they built hundreds of towns and 

 cities, and established industries of mining and manufacturing of 

 fabulous wealth; they engaged in moral and social reforms that 

 promised a new earth, if not a new heaven. In a word, they exhib- 



* American Orations, vol. i, p. 160. 



