ABSTRACT
The towns stubbornly insisted that, considering the real source of righteous political authority, the new law would be no law unless it were framed by a convention expressly elected for that purpose and unless the proposed constitution were expressly approved by a popular vote. Law was being made, not only by trusted popular agents for the benefit of the people and with their consent, but in one essential respect by the people themselves. Thus the fundamental Law to which the American people intrusted their ultimate sovereign power unfortunately-tended to become more than usually inaccessible. The democracy abdicated the continuing active exercise of effective power in the very act of affirming the reality of its own ultimate legal authority. A democracy differs from other forms of government in that it does not and cannot distinguish the welfare of the state from the welfare of its individual citizens.
