That is not all: it is representative government that takes the sting out of all the older criticisms of democracy. Plato devotes one of the saddest portions of his _Republic_ to showing how in a brief time, democracy must inevitably fall and be replaced by tyranny. With the democracy Plato knew this was true. It was impossible for Athens to protect and make permanent her constitution. She might pass a law declaring the penalty of death on any one proposing a change in the constitution. It did no good. Let some demagogue arise, sure of the suffrage of a majority of the citizens: he could call them into public assembly, cause a repeal of the law, and make any change in the constitution he desired. There was no way to prevent it. It is the invention and development of representative government that has changed all that. We chafe under the slow-moving character of our democracy--over the time it takes to get laws enacted and the longer time to get them executed. We may well be patient: this slow-moving character of democracy is the other side of its greatest safe-guard. It is because we cannot immediately express in action the popular will and opinion, but must think two, three, many times, working through chosen and responsible representatives of the people, that our democracy is not subject to the perils and criticisms of those of antiquity. The voice of the people in the day and hour, under the impulse of sudden caprice or passion, is anything but the voice of God: it is much more apt to be the voice of all the powers of darkness. It is common thought, sifted through uncommon thought, that approaches as near the voice of God as we can hope to get in this world. It is not the surface whim of public opinion, it is its _greatest common denominator_ that approximates the truth. It behooves us to remember this at a time when changes are coming with such swiftness. Our life has developed so rapidly that the old political forms proved inadequate to the solution of the new problems. As a practical people, we therefore quickly adopted or invented new forms. Doubtless this is, in the main, right, but we should understand clearly what we are doing. For instance, one of the great changes, recently inaugurated, is the election of national senators by popular vote. Our forefathers planned that the national upper house should represent a double sifting of popular opinion. We elected state legislatures; they, in turn, chose the national senators: thus these were twice removed from the popular will. It proved easy to corrupt state legislatures; the national senate came to represent too much the moneyed interests; and so, through an amendment to the constitution, we changed the process, and now elect our senators by direct vote of the people. This makes them more immediately representative of the popular will, and perhaps the change was wise; but we should recognize that we have removed one more safe-guard of democracy.