men who have from the political point of
view little to gain or to lose by their apparent heresies. The fact,
however, that a responsible politician like Mr. Roosevelt must be an
example more of moral than of intellectual independence, increases
rather than diminishes the eventual importance of consistent thinking
and plain speaking as essential parts of the work of political reform. A
reforming movement, whose supporters never understand its own proper
meaning and purpose, is sure in the end to go astray. It is all very
well for Englishmen to do their thinking after the event, because
tradition lies at the basis of their national life. But Americans, as a
nation, are consecrated to the realization of a group of ideas; and
ideas to be fruitful must square both with the facts to which they are
applied and with one another. Mr. Roosevelt and his hammer must be
accepted gratefully, as the best available type of national reformer;
but the day may and should come when a national reformer will appear who
can be figured more in the guise of St. Michael, armed with a flaming
sword and winged for flight.

CHAPTER VII

I

RECONSTRUCTION; ITS CONDITIONS AND PURPOSES

The best method of approaching a critical reconstruction of American
political ideas will be by means of an analysis of the meaning of
democracy. A clear popular understanding of the contents of the
democratic principle is obviously of the utmost practical political
importance to the American people. Their loyalty to the idea of
democracy, as they understand it, cannot be questioned. Nothing of any
considerable political importance is done or left undone in the United
States, unless such action or inaction can be plausibly defended on
democratic grounds; and the only way to secure for the American people
the benefit of a comprehensive and consistent political policy will be
to derive it from a comprehensive and consistent conception of
democracy.

Democracy as most frequently understood is essentially and exhaustively
defined as a matter of popular government; and such a definition raises
at once a multitude of time-honored, but by no means superannuated,
controversies. The constitutional liberals in England, in France, and in
this country have always objected to democracy as so understood, because
of the possible sanction it affords for the substitution of a popular
despotism in the place of the former royal or oligarchic despotisms.
From their point o