An excerpt from a public address by a great president addressing an ancient problem that we and our next president still must confront.  I apologize for the length.  Audiences must have had greater attention spans in those pre-television, pre-computer days.  Roosevelt is giving his listeners a brief history:

".......In the half century that followed there was constant war between those who, like Andrew Jackson, believed in a democracy conducted by and for a complete cross-section of the population, and those who, like the Directors of the Bank of the United States and their friends in the United States Senate, believed in the conduct of government by a self-perpetuating group at the top of the ladder. That this was the clear line of demarcation-the fundamental difference of opinion in regard to American institutions- is proved by an amazingly interesting letter which Lord Macaulay wrote in 1857 to an American friend.

This friend of his had written a book about Thomas Jefferson. Macaulay said "You are surprised to learn that I have not a high opinion of Mr. Jefferson and I am surprised at your surprise. I am certain that I never wrote a line and that I have never . . . uttered a word indicating an opinion that the supreme authority in a state ought to be entrusted to the majority of citizens told by the head; in other words, to the poorest and most ignorant part of society."

Macaulay, in other words, was opposed to what we call "popular government." He went on to say, "I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both."

Then, speaking of England, he said; "I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. . . . You may think that your country (speaking of America) enjoys an exception from these evils. . . . I am of a very different opinion. Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the old world, and while that is the case, the Jeffersonian polity may continue to exist without causing any fatal calamity. But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as Old England. Wages will be as low and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams, and in those Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million while another cannot get a full meal." And then Macaulay goes on to tell his American friend how they' handled such situations in England. He says "In bad years there is plenty of grumbling here and sometimes a little rioting, but it matters little. For here the sufferers are not the rulers. The supreme power is in the hands of a class, numerous indeed, but select . . . an educated class . . . a class which is, and knows itself to be, deeply interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order. Accordingly the malcontents are firmly yet gently restrained. The bad time is got over without robbing the wealthy to relieve the indigent. The springs of national prosperity soon begin to flow again . . . and all is tranquility and cheerfulness."

Almost, me thinks, I am reading not from Macaulay but from a resolution of the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Liberty League, the National Association of Manufacturers [two of these organizations still exist to plague us -LUD] or the editorials written at the behest of some well-known newspaper proprietors in 1936 and 1937.

Like these gentlemen of 1937, Macaulay in 1857 painted this gloomy picture of the future of the United States: "I cannot help foreboding the worst. It is quite plain that your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. . . . The day will come when . . . a multitude of people, none of whom has had more than half a breakfast or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a legislature . . . On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights . . . On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists . . . and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne and to ride in a carriage while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries. . . . I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity . . . do things which will prevent prosperity from returning; that you will act like people who should in a year of scarcity devour all the seed corn and thus make the next year a year, not of scarcity but of absolute famine. . . . There is nothing to stop you. Your constitution is all sail and no anchor. . . . Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your Republic will be . . . laid waste by Barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth."

That, my friends, with all due respect to Lord Macaulay, is an excellent representation of the cries of alarm which rise today from the throats of American Lord Macaulays. They tell you that America drifts toward the Scylla of dictatorship on the one hand, or the Charybdis of anarchy on the other. Their anchor for the salvation of the Ship of State is Macaulay's anchor: "Supreme power . . . in the hands of a class, numerous indeed, but select; of an educated class, of a class which is, and knows itself to be, deeply interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order."

Mine is a different anchor. They do not believe in democracy--I do. My anchor is democracy--and more democracy. And, my friends, I am of the firm belief that the Nation, by an overwhelming majority, supports my opposition to the vesting of supreme power in the hands of any class, numerous but select.

It is of interest to read the whole of Macaulay's letter with care--for I find in it no reference to the improving of the living conditions of the poor, to the encouragement of better homes or greater wages, or steadier work. I find no reference to the averting of panics, no words for the encouragement of the farmer-nothing at all, in fact, except the suggestion that "malcontents are firmly but gently restrained" . . . in the interest of the "security of property and the maintenance of order."

I am just as strongly in favor of the security of property and the maintenance of order as Lord Macaulay, or as the American Lord Macaulays who thunder today. And in this the American people are with me, too. But we cannot go along with the Tory insistence that salvation lies in the vesting of power in the hands of a select class, and that if America does not come to that system,' America will perish.

Macaulay condemned the American scheme of government 'based on popular majority. In this country eighty years later his successors do not yet dare openly to condemn the American form of government by popular majority. They profess adherence to the form, but, at the same time, their every act shows their opposition to the very fundamentals of democracy. They love to intone praise of liberty, to mouth phrases about the sanctity of our Constitution--but in their hearts they distrust majority rule because an enlightened majority will not tolerate the abuses which a privileged minority would seek to foist upon the people as a whole.[italics mine] 

Since the determination of many who compose this minority is to substitute their will for that of the majority, would it not be more honest for them, instead of using the Constitution as a cloak to hide their real designs, to come out frankly and say: "We agree with Macaulay that the American form of government will lead to disaster and therefore we seek a change in the American form of government as laid down by the Founding Fathers?"

They seek to substitute their own will for that of the majority, for they would serve their own interest above the general welfare. They reject the principle of the greater good for the greater number, which is the cornerstone of democratic government.

Under democratic government the poorest are no longer necessarily the most ignorant part of society. I agree with the saying of one of our famous statesmen who devoted himself to the principle of majority rule: "I respect the aristocracy of learning; I deplore the plutocracy of wealth; but thank God for the democracy of the heart."

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