sequently, it has tended
to provoke distrust on the part of good democrats. At every stage in the
history of American political ideas and practice we shall meet with the
unfortunate effects of this partial antagonism.

The error of the Federalists can, however, be excused by many
extenuating circumstances. Democracy as an ideal was misunderstood in
1786, and it was possessed of little or no standing in theory or
tradition. Moreover, the radical American democrats were doing much to
deserve the misgivings of the Federalists. Their ideas were narrow,
impracticable, and hazardous; and they were opposed to the essential
political need of the time--viz. the constitution of an efficient
Federal government. The Federalists may have misinterpreted and
perverted the proper purpose of American national organization, but they
could have avoided such misinterpretation only by an extraordinary
display of political insight and a heroic superiority to natural
prejudice. Their error sinks into insignificance compared with the
enormous service which they rendered to the American people and the
American cause. Without their help there might not have been any
American nation at all, or it might have been born under a far darker
cloud of political suspicion and animosity. The instrument which they
created, with all its faults, proved capable of becoming both the organ
of an efficient national government and the fundamental law of a
potentially democratic state. It has proved capable of flexible
development both in function and in purpose, and it has been developed
in both these directions without any sacrifice of integrity.

Its success has been due to the fact that its makers, with all their
apprehensions about democracy, were possessed of a wise and positive
political faith. They believed in liberty. They believed that the
essential condition of fruitful liberty was an efficient central
government. They knew that no government could be efficient unless its
powers equaled its responsibilities. They were willing to trust to such
a government the security and the welfare of the American people. The
Constitution has proved capable of development chiefly as the instrument
of these positive political ideas. Thanks to the theory of implied
powers, to the liberal construction of the Supreme Court during the
first forty years of its existence, and to the results of the Civil War
the Federal government has, on the whole, become more rather than l