s the people of a state or a community do let a direct
primary go by without asserting their authority as against the bosses. The
electorate of the United States is occasionally like the god Baal: it is
sometimes on a journey or it is sometimes asleep; but when it does awake,
it does not resemble the god Baal in the slightest degree. It is a great
self-possessed power which effectually takes control of its own affairs. I
am willing to wait. I am among those who believe so firmly in the
essential doctrines of democracy that I am willing to wait on the
convenience of this great sovereign, provided I know that he has got the
instrument to dominate whenever he chooses to grasp it.

Then there is another thing that the conservative people are concerned
about: the direct election of United States Senators. I have seen some
thoughtful men discuss that with a sort of shiver, as if to disturb the
original constitution of the United States Senate was to do something
touched with impiety, touched with irreverence for the Constitution
itself. But the first thing necessary to reverence for the United States
Senate is respect for United States Senators. I am not one of those who
condemn the United States Senate as a body; for, no matter what has
happened there, no matter how questionable the practices or how corrupt
the influences which have filled some of the seats in that high body, it
must in fairness be said that the majority in it has all the years through
been untouched by stain, and that there has always been there a sufficient
number of men of integrity to vindicate the self-respect and the
hopefulness of America with regard to her institutions.

But you need not be told, and it would be painful to repeat to you, how
seats have been bought in the Senate; and you know that a little group of
Senators holding the balance of power has again and again been able to
defeat programs of reform upon which the whole country had set its heart;
and that whenever you analyzed the power that was behind those little
groups you have found that it was not the power of public opinion, but
some private influence, hardly to be discerned by superficial scrutiny,
that had put those men there to do that thing.

Now, returning to the original principles upon which we profess to stand,
have the people of the United States not the right to see to it that every
seat in the Senate represents the unbought United States of America? Does
the direct electio