Bryan does, gingerly and with a bad conscience. He makes them with a
frank and full confidence in an efficient national organization as the
necessary agent of the national interest and purpose. He has completely
abandoned that part of the traditional democratic creed which tends to
regard the assumption by the government of responsibility, and its
endowment with power adequate to the responsibility as inherently
dangerous and undemocratic. He realizes that any efficiency of
organization and delegation of power which is necessary to the
promotion of the American national interest must be helpful to
democracy. More than any other American political leader, except
Lincoln, his devotion both to the national and to the democratic ideas
is thorough-going and absolute.
As the founder of a new national democracy, then, his influence and his
work have tended to emancipate American democracy from its Jeffersonian
bondage. They have tended to give a new meaning to popular government by
endowing it with larger powers, more positive responsibilities, and a
better faith in human excellence.
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