Feudalism as a means of organizing society had failed. The newly declared liberties were confided to the newly created state. It was political democracy upon which the founders of the Republic depended to make good the promise of 1776. The American colonists had fled to escape economic, political and religious tyranny in the mother countries. They had drunk the cup of its bitterness in the long contest with England over the rights of taxation, of commerce, of manufacture, and of local political control. They had their fill of a mastery built upon the special privilege of an aristocratic minority. It was liberty and justice they sought and democracy was the instrument that they selected to emancipate themselves from the old forms of privilege and to give to all an equal opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Political democracy was to place the management of community business in the hands of the people--to give them liberty in the control of public affairs. The highest interest of democracy was to be the interest of the people. There could be no higher interest because the people were supreme. The people were to select the public servants; direct their activities; determine public policy; prescribe the law; demand its enforcement; and if need be assert their superior authority over any part of the government, not excepting the constitution.[1] Democracy, in politics, was based on the idea that public affairs could best be run by the public voice. However expert may be the hand that administers the laws, the hand and the heart that renders the final decision in large questions must belong to the public.[2] The people who laid the foundations for democracy in France and the United States feared tyranny. They and their ancestors had been, for centuries, the victims of governmental despotism. They were on their guard constantly against governmental aggression in any form. And they, therefore, placed the strictest limitations upon the powers that governments should enjoy. Special privilege government was run by a special class,--the hereditary aristocracy--in the interest and for the profit of that class. They held the wealth of the nation--the land--and lived comfortably upon its produce. They never worked--no gentleman could work and remain a gentleman. They carried on the affairs of the court--sometimes well, sometimes badly; maintained an extravagant scale of social life; built up a vicious system of secret international diplomacy; commanded in time of war, and at all times; levied rents and taxes which went very largely to increase their own comfort and better their own position in life. The machinery of government and the profits from government remained in the hands of this one class.