The power to legislate implies the power to discriminate; and
the best way consequently for a good democracy of equal rights to avoid
the danger of discrimination will be to organize the state so that its
power for ill will be rigidly restricted. The possible preferential
interference on the part of a strong and efficient government must be
checked by making the government feeble and devoid of independence. The
less independent and efficient the several departments of the government
are permitted to become, the less likely that the government as a whole
will use its power for anything but a really popular purpose.
In the foregoing type of political organization, which has been very
much favored by the American democracy, the freedom of the official
political leader is sacrificed for the benefit of the supposed freedom
of that class of equalized individuals known as the "people," but by the
"people" Jefferson and his followers have never meant all the people or
the people as a whole. They have meant a sort of apotheosized
majority--the people in so far as they could be generalized and reduced
to an average.
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