adopted, even in human beings. It
may be said without exaggeration that the American scheme of government
was planned and set up to perpetuate the ascendency of the
property-holding class in a society leavened with democratic ideas.
Those who framed it were fully alive to the fact that their economic
advantages could be retained only by maintaining their class ascendency
in the government. They understood the economic significance of
democracy. They realized that if the supremacy of the majority were once
fully established the entire policy of the government would be
profoundly changed. They foresaw that it would mean the abolition of all
private monopoly and the abridgment and regulation of property rights
in the interest of the general public.

The Constitution was in form a political document, but its significance
was mainly economic. It was the outcome of an organized movement on the
part of a class to surround themselves with legal and constitutional
guarantees which would check the tendency toward democratic legislation.
These were made effective through the attitude of the United States
courts which, as Professor Burgess says, "have never declined
jurisdiction where private property was immediately affected on the
ground that the question was political."[177]

"There can be no question that the national government has given to the
minority a greater protection than it has enjoyed anywhere else in the
world, save in those countries where the minority is a specially
privileged aristocracy and the right of suffrage is limited. So absolute
have property rights been held by the Supreme Court, that it even, by
the Dred Scott decision, in effect made the whole country a land of
slavery, because the slave was property, and the rights of property were
sacred."[178]

In carrying out the original intent of the Constitution with reference
to property the courts have developed and applied the doctrine of vested
rights--a doctrine which has been used with telling effect for the
purpose of defeating democratic reforms. This doctrine briefly stated is
that property rights once granted are sacred and inviolable. A rigid
adherence to this policy would effectually deprive the government of the
power to make the laws governing private property conform to social and
economic changes. It would disregard the fact that vested rights are
often vested wrongs, and that one important, if not indeed the most
important, task which a govern