the right
is reserved to amend or repeal all laws conferring corporate powers.
Such constitutional changes provide no remedy, however, for the evils
resulting from legislative grants made previous to their adoption. The
granting of special charters is now also prohibited in many states, the
constitution requiring that all corporations shall be formed under
general laws. These constitutional changes may be regarded as in the
interest of the capitalist class as a whole, whose demand was for a
broader and more liberal policy--one which would extend the advantages
of the corporate form of organization to all capitalists in every line
of business. But even our general corporation laws have been enacted too
largely in the interest of those who control our business undertakings
and without due regard to the rights of the general public.

A study of our political history shows that the attitude of the courts
has been responsible for much of our political immorality. By protecting
the capitalist in the possession and enjoyment of privileges unwisely
and even corruptly granted, they have greatly strengthened the motive
for employing bribery and other corrupt means in securing the grant of
special privileges. If the courts had all along held that any proof of
fraud or corruption in obtaining a franchise or other legislative grant
was sufficient to justify its revocation, the lobbyist, the bribe-giver,
and the "innocent purchaser" of rights and privileges stolen from the
people, would have found the traffic in legislative favors a precarious
and much less profitable mode of acquiring wealth.

CHAPTER XIII

THE INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRACY UPON THE CONSTITUTION

The distinguishing feature of the Constitution, as shown in the
preceding chapters of this book, was the elaborate provisions which it
contained for limiting the power of the majority. The direction of its
development, however, has in many respects been quite different from
that for which the more conservative of its framers hoped.[188] The
checks upon democracy which it contained were nevertheless so skilfully
contrived and so effective that the progress of the popular movement has
been more seriously hampered and retarded here than in any other country
where the belief in majority rule has come to be widely accepted. In
some important respects the system as originally set up has yielded to
the pressure of present-day tendencies in political thought; but many of
its f