Recent Institutional Legislation

The brief period covered by our history as an independent nation has been, for the student of political institutions, an interesting and eventful one. Within it have been crowded changes in political thought that have excited the apprehensions of those who fear, and inspired hope in those who wish for the ultimate triumph of truly popular government. Rightly viewed our entire history as a nation has been a record of active and unceasing conflict between opposing views of government. The real struggle, the one which is fundamental, the one which in importance has overshadowed all others, the one which in this as in other countries has had a determining influence upon the course of political evolution, has been and still is over the question in whose hands shall the power of ultimate control over the State be lodged. This question, though often kept in the background of political discussion and for that reason not sufficiently appreciated by many who have given their attention mainly to the outward and visible phenomena of our political life, is nevertheless the one which, consciously or unconsciously, has been the cause of all important changes made in our governmental institutions. Notwithstanding the more or less prevalent belief that the one distinguishing feature of the American constitutional system is its recognition of and adaptation to the idea of government by the people, it is nevertheless true that the fear of too much democracy, rather than too little, largely determined the form in which our general government was cast in the beginning. The subsequent development of our political institutions has been due in large measure to the effort to make the constitutional arrangements inherited from our Federalist fathers a more effective means of popular rule. The whole course of later political development in this country may be viewed as the outcome of a movement to evade or break down the checks intended to guard against what the founders regarded as an undue and dangerous extension of the power of the people.