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Title: The Spirit of American Government
A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And
Relation To Democracy

Author: J. Allen Smith

Release Date: February 13, 2009 [EBook #28067]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Spirit of American Government

_A STUDY OF THE CONSTITUTION: ITS ORIGIN, INFLUENCE AND RELATION
TO DEMOCRACY_

BY

J. ALLEN SMITH, LL.B., PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

[Illustration]

The Chautauqua Press
CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
MCMXI

COPYRIGHT, 1907,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Printed April, 1907. Reprinted March, 1911.

Norwood Press:
Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE

It is the purpose of this volume to trace the influence of our
constitutional system upon the political conditions which exist in this
country to-day. This phase of our political problems has not received
adequate recognition at the hands of writers on American politics. Very
often indeed it has been entirely ignored, although in the short period
which has elapsed since our Constitution was framed and adopted, the
Western world has passed through a political as well as an industrial
revolution.

In the eighteenth century the majority was outside of the pale of
political rights. Government as a matter of course was the expression of
the will of a minority. Even in the United States, where hereditary rule
was overthrown by the Revolution, an effective and recognized minority
control still survived through the property qualifications for the
suffrage and for office-holding, which excluded a large proportion of
the people from participation in political affairs. Under such
conditions there could be but little of what is now known as democracy.
Moreover, slavery continued to exist upon a large scale for nearly
three-quarters of a century after the Consti