Democracy

a government by the people. It is not a primitive form of government. Savage tribes are governed usually by a chief, sheik, or other leader. The earliest approach to a pure democracy is the town meeting in which each has a voice in the adoption of regulations and the election of officers. Democracy is entirely opposed to the idea of leading families, inherited dignities, and permanent officeholders. As communities grow larger and expand into commonwealths, it is impossible for all the voters to get together. Some one has said that a pure democracy must be able to gather within hearing of a single voice. When the number of voters becomes too large for such an assembly it is necessary to elect representatives to perform the actual work of making laws. In the farming regions of the United States local matters are still managed in a democratic way; but in city, state, and national affairs, business is transacted by representatives who are for their term of office out of reach of the people. Speaking of the United States, President Eliot of Harvard, says:

After observing the facts of a full century, one may therefore say of the American democracy that it has contracted public debt with moderation, paid it with unexampled promptness, acquired as good a public credit as the world has ever known, made private property secure, and shown no tendency to attach riches or to subsidize poverty, or in either direction to violate the fundamental principle of democracy that all men are equal before the law.