But such a method of political organization was calculated
to thwart the popular will, just in so far as that will did not conform
to what the Federalists believed to be the essentials of a stable
political and social order. It was antagonistic to democracy as that
word was then, and is still to a large extent, understood.
The extent of this antagonism to democracy, if not in intention at least
in effect, is frequently over-rated. The antagonism depends upon the
identification of democracy with a political organization for expressing
immediately and completely the will of the majority--whatever that will
may be; and such a conception of democracy contains only part of the
truth. Nevertheless the founders of the Constitution did succeed in
giving some effect to their distrust of the democratic principle, no
matter how conservatively defined; and this was at once a grave error on
their part and a grave misfortune for the American state. Founded as the
national government is, partly on a distrust of the American democracy,
it has always tended to make the democracy somewhat suspicious of the
national government.
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