ABSTRACT
America in 1776 was not a democracy. It was not even a democracy on paper. It was at best a shadow-democracy. The Puritans were by no means ardent democrats, their government, compounded of English and Hebrew tradition, inclining rather to theocracy. The democratic spirit, however, found expression in the town meeting, in which the good citizens came together to build the road, provide for the school, and pass laws against scolds and Sabbath-breakers. It was a primitive, unrepresentative democracy in a group small, simple, and homogeneous. It differed widely from the larger colonial, and later from the State and national governments, by which the township was subsequently to be overshadowed. It was a democracy of poverty, – of men of small means, – and it differed from modern democracies of wealth, in which enormous fortunes and their getting and keeping involve the clash of gigantic interests.
