To be sure it was at the same time true that the government was given no positive power. Every one was thoroughly frightened of governments which were founded on status and resulted in arbitrary authority. The executive power was feared, therefore it was so equipped as to be unequal to its task; the legislative power was feared, so the courts were given power over the legislatures, were allowed to declare their acts valid or invalid; the national government was feared, therefore Congress was given only certain powers. Power was not granted because no man and no institution was trusted. The will to act could not be a motive force in 1789, because no embodiment of the will was trusted; the framers of our constitutions could not conceive of a kind of will which could be trusted. Fear, not faith, suspicion not trust, were the foundation of our early government. The government had, therefore, no large formative function, it did not look upon itself as a large social power. As the individual was to be protected, the government was to protect. All our thinking in the latter part of the eighteenth century was rooted in the idea of a weak government; this has been thought to show our individualism.[71] But our government as imagined by its founders did not work.[72] Our system of checks and balances gave no real power to any department. Above all there was no way of fixing responsibility. A condition of chaos was the result. Such complicated machinery was almost unworkable; there was no way of getting anything done under our official system. Moreover, the individual was not satisfied with his function of being protected, he wanted an actual share in the government. Therefore an extra-official system was adopted, the party organization. The two chief reasons for this adoption were: (1) to give the individual some share in government, (2) to give the government a chance to carry out definite policies, to provide some kind of a unifying power. What effect has party organization had on the individual and on government? The domination of the party gives no real opportunity to the individual: originality is crushed; the aim of all party organization is to turn out a well-running voting machine. The party is not interested in men but in voters—an entirely different matter. Party organization created artificial majorities, but gave to the individual little power in or connection with government. The basic weakness of party organization is that the individual gets his significance only through majorities. Any method which looks to the fulfilment of the individual through the domination of majorities is necessarily not only partial but false. The present demand that the nation shall have the full power of the individual is the heaviest blow that party organization has ever received.