ABSTRACT
The reasons for a discrepancy between public opinion and official politics lie anyhow not in the special forms prescribed by the Constitution, but in the means by which the forms prescribed by the Constitution are practically filled by the nation. American politics might keep to the letter of the Constitution, and still be the truest reflection of public opinion. Public opinion accepts no abstract schematizations, but considers the reality in all its complication, and in its debates no weight is given to any show of hands or other demonstration of mere numbers. Public opinion in the United States would be no true indication of the forces at work in the nation if it did not represent all the essentials of the typical American. The particular interests of capital and labour, of university and primary school, of city and country, have not their special representatives at the court of public opinion.
