The
greatest American political leaders have been popular without any
personal capitulation; and their success is indicative of what is
theoretically the most wholesome relation between individual political
liberty and a democratic distribution of effective political power. The
highest and most profitable individual political distinction is that
which is won from a large field and from a whole people. Political, even
more than other kinds of distinction, should not be the fruit of a
limited area of selection. It must be open to everybody, and it must be
acceptable to the community as a whole. In fact, the concession of
substantially equal political rights is an absolute condition of any
fundamental political bond. Grave as are the dangers which a democratic
political system incurs, still graver ones are incurred by a rigidly
limited electoral organization. A community, so organized, betrays a
fundamental lack of confidence in the mutual loyalty and good faith of
its members, and such a community can remain well united only at the
cost of a mixture of patronage and servility.
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