On the other hand, can we
reply that the Sovereign people is constituted by any chance majority
which happens to obtain control of the government, and that the
decisions and actions of the majority are inevitably and unexceptionally
democratic? Such an assertion of the doctrine of popular Sovereignty
would bestow absolute Sovereign authority on merely a part of the
people. Majority rule, under certain prescribed conditions, is a
necessary constituent of any practicable democratic organization; but
the actions or decisions of a majority need not have any binding moral
and national authority. Majority rule is merely one means to an
extremely difficult, remote and complicated end; and it is a piece of
machinery which is peculiarly liable to get out of order. Its arbitrary
and dangerous tendencies can, as a matter of fact, be checked in many
effectual and legitimate ways, of which the most effectual is the
cherishing of a tradition, partly expressed in some body of fundamental
law, that the true people are, as Bismarck declared, in some measure an
invisible multitude of spirits--the nation of yesterday and to-morrow,
organized for its national historical mission.
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