d to limit the authority of the government, but the framers of the
Constitution wished to bring about the limitation of governmental
functions because they feared the consequences of majority rule.
Formerly the many advocated the limitation of the power of king and
aristocracy in the interest of liberty; now the few advocate the
limitation of the power of the many for their own protection. With the
abolition of monarchy and aristocracy the attitude of the few and the
many has been reversed. The aristocratic and special interests that
formerly opposed the limitation of political activity when they were
predominant in the government, now favor it as a protection against the
growing power of the masses, while the latter, who formerly favored, now
oppose it. The conservative classes now regard the popular majority with
the same distrust which the liberals formerly felt toward the king and
aristocracy. In fact, the present-day conservative goes even farther
than this and would have us believe that the popular majority is a much
greater menace to liberty than king or aristocracy has ever been in the
past.

"There can be no tyranny of a monarch so intolerable," says a recent
American writer, "as that of the multitude, for it has the power behind
it that no king can sway."[176] This is and has all along been the
attitude of the conservative classes who never lose an opportunity to
bring the theory of democracy into disrepute. The defenders of the
American Constitution clearly see that unless the fundamental principle
of popular government is discredited the system of checks can not
survive.

There is no liberty, we are told by the present-day followers of
Alexander Hamilton, where the majority is supreme. The American
political system realizes this conception of liberty mainly through the
Supreme Court--an organ of government which interprets the Constitution
and laws of Congress and which may forbid the carrying out of the
expressed will of the popular majority. It necessarily follows that the
authority which can thus overrule the majority and enforce its own views
of the system is an authority greater than the majority. All governments
must belong to one or the other of two classes according as the ultimate
basis of political power is the many or the few. There is, in fact, no
middle ground. We must either recognize the many as supreme, with no
checks upon their authority except such as are implied in their own
intelligence