Page:Back to the Republic.djvu/62

 vehicle ever conceived by the mind of man that was able to bear safely the burdens of human liberty and human rights. That is the standard form, the golden mean, the republic, in the science of government, just as four wheels constitute the standard, the golden mean, in the domain of transportation. It is comparatively simple to figure out what would happen in the domain of transportation if we should try to work out the problem of transportation on three wheels or less, or five wheels or more. It would merely result in confusion and failure to work out the problem.

That identical thing happens in government. When you take away one or more of the four elements you have autocracy. When you add one or more to the four elements you have democracy. This accounts for the comparatively slight progress which was made toward the solution of the problems of government during all the thousands of years prior to 1788 A.D. The pendulum was swinging back and forth from the extreme of autocracy, with its attendant evils, to the extreme of democracy with its attendant evils. The reason we made great progress for a century and a quarter following the adoption of the Constitution and founding of the republic is that we followed quite closely the plan of creating and utilizing those four elements in the