eatures are at variance with what has come to be regarded as
essential in any well-organized democracy.

It is not so much in formal changes made in the Constitution as in the
changes introduced through interpretation and usage that we must look
for the influence of nineteenth-century democracy. In fact, the formal
amendment of the Constitution, as shown in Chapter IV, is practically
impossible. But no scheme of government set up for eighteenth-century
society could have survived throughout the nineteenth and into the
twentieth century without undergoing important modifications. No century
of which we have any knowledge has witnessed so much progress along
nearly every line of thought and activity. An industrial and social
revolution has brought a new type of society into existence and changed
our point of view with reference to nearly every important economic and
political question. Our constitutional and legal system, however, has
stubbornly resisted the influence of this newer thought, although enough
has been conceded to the believers in majority rule from time to time to
keep the system of checks from breaking down.

Some of the checks which the founders of our government established no
longer exist except in form. This is true of the electoral college
through which the framers of the Constitution hoped and expected to
prevent the majority of the qualified voters from choosing the
President. In this case democracy has largely defeated the end of the
framers, though the small states, through their disproportionately
large representation in the electoral college, exert an influence in
Presidential elections out of proportion to their population.

The most important change in the practical operation of the system has
been accomplished indirectly through the extension of the suffrage in
the various states. Fortunately, the qualifications of electors were not
fixed by the Federal Constitution. If they had been, it is altogether
probable that the suffrage would have been much restricted, since the
right to vote was at that time limited to the minority. The state
constitutions responded in time to the influence of the democratic
movement and manhood suffrage became general. This placed not only the
various state governments but also the President and the House of
Representatives upon a basis which was popular in theory if not in fact.
Much remained and still remains to be done in the matter of perfecting
the party syste