ot fidelity to the rank
and file of the people who vote the party ticket, but subserviency to
those interests which dominate the party machine. The choice of
candidates is largely made in the secret councils of the ruling minority
and the party conventions under color of making a popular choice of
candidates merely ratify the minority choice already made. Popular
elections under such a system do not necessarily mean that the people
have any real power of selecting public officials. They merely have the
privilege of voting for one or the other of two lists of candidates
neither of which may be in any true sense representative of the people
or their interests.

But in nothing is the lack of popular control over the party more
clearly seen than in the party platforms. These are supposed to provide
a medium for the expression of public opinion upon the important
questions with which the government has to deal. Under a political
system which recognized the right of the majority to rule, a party
platform would be constructed with a view to ascertaining the sense of
that majority. Does the platform of the American political party serve
this purpose? Does it seek to crystallize and secure a definite
expression of public opinion at the polls, or is it so constructed as to
prevent it? This question can best be answered by an examination of our
party platforms.

The Constitution, as we have seen, was a reaction against and a
repudiation of the theory of government expressed in the Declaration of
Independence, although this fact was persistently denied by those who
framed it and urged its adoption. The high regard in which popular
government was held by the masses did not permit any open and avowed
attempt to discredit it. The democracy of the people, however, was a
matter of faith rather than knowledge, a mere belief in the right of the
masses to rule rather than an intelligent appreciation of the political
agencies and constitutional forms through which the ends of popular
government were to be attained. Unless this is borne in mind, it is
impossible to understand how the Constitution, which was regarded at
first with distrust, soon came to be reverenced by the people generally
as the very embodiment of democratic doctrines. In order to bring about
this change in the attitude of the people, the Constitution was
represented by those who sought to advance it in popular esteem as the
embodiment of those principles of popular gover