hievements of
its favorite sons; and the most effective means thereto is that of
denying to favoritism of all kinds the opportunity of becoming a mere
habit.

The specific means whereby this necessary and formative favoritism can
be prevented from becoming a mere habit vary radically among the
different fields of personal activity. In the field of intellectual work
the conditions imposed upon the individual must for the most part be the
creation of public opinion; and in its proper place this aspect of the
relation between individuality and democracy will receive special
consideration. In the present connection, however, the relation of
individual liberty to democratic organization and policy can be
illustrated and explained most helpfully by a consideration of the
binding and formative conditions of political and economic liberty.
Democracies have always been chiefly preoccupied with the problems
raised by the exercise of political and economic opportunities, because
success in politics and business implies the control of a great deal of
physical power and the consequent possession by the victors in a
peculiar degree of both the motive and the means to perpetuate their
victory.

The particular friends of freedom, such as Hamilton and the French
"doctrinaires," have always believed that both civil and political
liberty depended on the denial of popular Sovereignty and the rigid
limitation of the suffrage. Of course, a democrat cannot accept such a
conclusion. He should doubtless admit that the possession of absolute
Sovereign power is always liable to abuse; and if he is candid, he can
hardly fail to add that democratic favoritism is subject to the same
weakness as aristocratic or royal favoritism. It tends, that is, to make
individuals seek distinction not by high individual efficiency, but by
compromises in the interest of useful popularity. It would be vain to
deny the gravity of this danger or the extent to which, in the best of
democracies, the seekers after all kinds of distinction have been
hypnotized by an express desire for popularity. But American statesmen
have not always been obliged to choose between Hamilton's unpopular
integrity and Henry Clay's unprincipled bidding for popular favor. The
greatest American political leaders have been popular without any
personal capitulation; and their success is indicative of what is
theoretically the most wholesome relation between individual political
liberty and a