he people make mistakes in so simple
a matter as the selection of their agents, they would be infallible in
the incomparably more complex and difficult task of the enactment and
interpretation of laws? There was never a more glaring non sequitur,
and yet it is the very cornerstone upon which rests the whole
structure of the new philosophy. "The people cannot be trusted with
few things," runs this singular logic, "therefore let us put all
things into their hands."

With one breath we are asked to renounce the old system because the
people make mistakes, and with the next breath we are solemnly assured
that if we adopt the new system the people will not make mistakes. I
confess I am not mentally alert enough to follow that sort of logic.
It is too much like the road which was so crooked that the traveler
who entered upon it had only proceeded a few steps when he met himself
coming back. You cannot change the nature of men, Mr. Chairman, by
changing their system of government. The limitations of human judgment
and knowledge and conscience which render perfection in representative
government unattainable will still abide even after that form of
government is swept away, and the ideal will still be far distant.

Let it not be said or imagined, Mr. Speaker, that because I protest
against converting this Republic into a democracy therefore I lack
confidence in the people. No man has greater faith, sir, than I have
in the intelligence, the integrity, the patriotism, and the
fundamental common sense of the average American citizen. But I am for
representative rather than for direct government, because I have
greater confidence in the second thought of the people than I have in
their first thought. And that, in the last analysis, is the
difference, and the only difference, so far as results are concerned
between the new system and that which it seeks to supplant; it is the
fundamental difference between a democracy and a republic. In either
form of government the people have their way. The difference is that
in a democracy the people have their way in the beginning, whereas in
a republic the people have their way in the end--and the end is
usually enough wiser than the beginning to be worth waiting for.

We count ourselves the fittest people in the world for
self-government, and we probably are. But fit as we are we sometimes
make mistakes. We sometimes form the most violent and erroneous
opinions upon impulse, without full in