542 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



courts. Moreover, judicial interpretation has given a scope to certain 

 clauses of the constitution which no one suspected at the time of their 

 adoption. In the Dartmouth College case in 1819, the Supreme Court 

 held that a charter is a contract, and in a case involving the Southern 

 Pacific Kailroad in 1882 the same court interpreted the word "person" 

 to include a corporation. In the former case, the court enlarged the con- 

 ception of property, and in the latter case, in interpreting an amend- 

 ment intended for the protection of the negro, the court included under 

 its guardianship the property of artificial as well as of natural persons. 

 The Supreme Court has well been termed "the bulwark of private prop- 

 erty." President Hadley aptly remarks : 



When it is said, as it commonly is, that the fundamental division of powers in 

 the modern State is into legislative, executive and judicial, the student of Ameri- 

 can institutions may fairly note an exception. The fundamental division of 

 powers in the Constitution of the United States is between voters op. the one hand 

 and property owners on the other. The forces of democracy on one side, divided 

 between the executive and the legislature, are set over against the forces of 

 property on the other side, with the judiciary as arbiter between them; the con- 

 stitution itself not only forbidding the legislature and executive to trench upon 

 the rights of property, but compelling the judiciary to define and uphold those 

 rights in a manner provided by the constitution itself.s 



These remarks were originally delivered at Berlin University. To 

 the average investor, both at home and abroad, they describe what 

 appears to be an ideal situation. On the other hand, to a democracy 

 seeking to possess more fully the reins of power they indicate a condi- 

 tion that is far from satisfactory. 



Slavery 

 A short time after the election of Washington, a reaction set in 

 against the party of property. The commanding personality of "Wash- 

 ington and the high respect in which he was held for a brief period 

 stemmed the reaction but could not avert it. The election of Jefferson 

 marked the triumph of the party of equality, a triumph which the west- 

 ward drift of population and the successive admission of trans-Alle- 

 gheny states helped to perpetuate. Kentucky was admitted as a state 

 in 1792, Tennessee in 1796, Ohio in 1802, and in the ten years ending 

 with 1821, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Maine 

 and Missouri joined the family of states, a greater number than in any 

 decade before or since. The Louisiana purchase sealed the fate of the 

 Federalist party. The ideal of equality in the United States is greatly 

 indebted to the circumstances which have made it possible for such large 

 numbers to become the owners of land in their own right. The liberali- 

 zation of the terms on which the public lands were offered for sale in 

 1800, and in the years following, contributed powerfully to the growing 

 prevalence of democratic equality. This found expression in the grad- 

 *The Independent, Vol. LXIV, 190S, p. 837. 



