ABSTRACT

The interpretation which the Law received at the hands of the courts, rather than the law itself, constituted the effective vehicle of the rule of reason. In consequence of the benevolent administration of the Law, the American people cheerfully accepted its supremacy. The American people were learning quite as much from their own unofficial experiments in democracy as they were from official instruction in the Word. The democracy was subordinated to the rule of reason in order that its behavior might be moralized and rationalized. Many friends of the traditional system do not scruple to declare that the real guarantee of political stability and social progress in a constitutional democracy consists in the good-will of a considerable majority of the voters. In regions effectively controlled by the Law the American democracy has submitted so obediently that as soon as it was free from control it felt authorized to disregard mere legality.