mocracy 384
Democracy would make government a science 386
Dependence of man's industrial activities on the social
environment 388
Necessity for equality of opportunity ignored by conservative
writers 390
The scientific justification of democracy's hostility
to privilege 394
Democracy's attitude toward the doctrine of _laissez
faire_ 397

THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT

CHAPTER I

THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Constitutional government is not necessarily democratic. Usually it is a
compromise in which monarchical and aristocratic features are retained.
The proportion in which the old and the new are blended depends, of
course, upon the progress the democratic movement has made. Every step
toward democracy has been stubbornly opposed by the few, who have
yielded to the popular demand, from time to time, only what necessity
required. The constitution of the present day is the outcome of this
long-continued and incessant struggle. It reflects in its form and
character the existing distribution of political power within the state.

If we go back far enough we find government nearly everywhere in the
hands of a King and privileged class. In its earlier stages the
constitutional struggle was between monarchy and aristocracy, the King
seeking to make his authority supreme and the nobility seeking to limit
and circumscribe it. Accordingly, government oscillated between monarchy
and aristocracy, a strong and ambitious King getting the reins of
government largely in his own hands, while the aristocracy encroached
upon the power and prerogatives of a weak and incompetent one. Thus
democracy played no part in the earlier constitutional struggles. The
all-important question was whether the King or the nobility should
control the state. Civil wars were waged to decide it, and government
gravitated toward monarchy or aristocracy according as the monarchical
or aristocratic party prevailed.

Under William the Conqueror and his immediate successors the government
of England was practically an absolute monarchy. Only the highest class
was consulted in the Great Council and the advice of these the King was
not obliged to follow. Later, as a result