Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/352

344 In order to understand the full importance of this you must look at some facts in social and political development which had immediately preceded. At the adoption of the Constitution property qualifications limiting the suffrage were general, but they had been removed steadily and gradually until by 1820 the suffrage was universal throughout almost all the states. The Jeffersonian ideas of government and policy had also spread steadily and rapidly and had received more and more extended interpretation. They were fallacious and only half true at best, that is to say, they were of the most mischievous order of propositions possible in politics; but in popular use and interpretation they had become worn into a kind of political cant, in which the moiety of truth had disappeared and the residuum of falsehood had become the highest political truth and the badge of political orthodoxy. To use the ballot was held synonymous with freedom; the rule of the numerical majority was made equivalent to the republic; the "will of the people" was held paramount to the Constitution — which is nothing more than saying that to do as you choose is superior to doing as you have agreed. And it had become a political dogma that, if there are only enough of you together, when you do as you have a mind to, you are sure to do right.

I use the past sense here, but you will at once perceive that I am describing what is still strong amongst us.

Of course there was, outside of these two classes, a large body of persons, scattered, as to their political opinions, all the way between the two extremes; but the second class was large and was growing very rapidly from social and industrial causes which are yet to be specified.

During the European wars the people of the New England states made great gains from commerce. In the middle states manufactures began under the protection of embargo and war. In the South there was less wealth,