Douglas confused
authoritative popular Sovereignty with the majority vote of a few
hundred "squatters" in a frontier state, and asserted that on democratic
principles such expressions of the popular will should be accepted as
final. But an analogous mistake lurks in all static forms of democracy.
The bestowal and the exercise of political and civil rights are merely a
method of organization, which if used in proper subordination to the
ultimate democratic purpose, may achieve in action something of the
authority of a popular Sovereign will. But to cleave to the details of
such an organization as the very essence of democracy is utterly to
pervert the principle of national democratic Sovereignty. From this
point of view, the Bourbon who wishes the existing system with its
mal-adaptations and contradictions preserved in all its lack of
integrity, commits an error analogous to that of the radical, who wishes
by virtue of a majority vote immediately to destroy some essential part
of the fabric. Both of them conceive that the whole moral and national
authority of the democratic principle can be invoked in favor of
institutions already in existence or of purposes capable of immediate
achievement.
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