While it is true that there were undemocratic elements in the mental equipment and psychological bent of our forefathers, and it is these which I have emphasized because from them came our immediate development, it is equally true that there were also sound democratic elements to which we can trace our present ideas of democracy. Such tracing even in briefest form there is not space for here. Footnote 72: It became at once evident that a government whose chief function was to see that individual rights, property rights, state rights, were not invaded, was hardly adequate to unite our colonies with all their separatist instincts, or to meet the needs of a rapidly developing continent. Our national government at once adopted a constructive policy. Guided by Hamilton it assumed constructive powers authority for which could be found in the constitution only by a most liberal construction of its terms. When Jefferson, an antinationalist, acquired Louisiana in 1803, it seemed plain that no such restricted national government as was at first conceived could possibly work. Footnote 73: These English writers to whom our debt is so large are not responsible for this, but their misinterpreters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXI AFTER DIRECT GOVERNMENT—WHAT? -------------- WE have outgrown our political system. We must face this frankly. We had, first, government by law,[74] second, government by parties and big business, and all the time some sort of fiction of the “consent of the governed” which we said meant democracy. But we have never had government by the people. The third step is to be the development of machinery by which the fundamental ideas of the people can be got at and embodied; further, by which we can grow fundamental ideas; further still, by which we can prepare the soil in which fundamental ideas can grow. Direct government will we hope lead to this step, but it cannot alone do this. How then shall it be supplemented? Let us look at the movement for direct government with two others closely connected with it—the concentration of administrative responsibility and the increase of social legislation—three movements which are making an enormous change in American political life. Then let us see if we can discover what idea it is necessary to add to those involved in these three movements, in other words what new principle is needed in modern politics.