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290 ter. Not only had the Jackson party the more efficient organization and the shrewder managers, but they were favored by a peculiar development in the condition of the popular mind.

In the early times of the Republic the masses of the American people were, owing to their circumstances, uneducated and ignorant, and, owing to traditional habit, they had a reverential respect for superiority of talent and breeding, and yielded readily to its leadership. Their growing prosperity, the material successes achieved by them in the development of the country, strengthened their confidence in themselves; and the result of this widening self-consciousness was the triumph of the democratic theory of government in the election of Jefferson. Still the old habit of readily accepting the leadership of superior intelligence and education remained sufficiently strong to permit the succession of several presidents taken from the ranks of professional statesmen. But there always comes a time in the life of a democracy — and it is a critical period — when the masses grow impatient of all pretensions or admissions of superiority; when a vague distrust of professional statesmanship, of trained skill in the conduct of the government, seizes upon them, and makes them easily believe that those who possess such trained skill will, if constantly intrusted with the management of public affairs, take some sort of advantage of those less trained; that, after all, the business of governing is no more difficult than other business;