constitutional and political arrangements have made it almost impossible for any reasonable majority to overcome the opposition of organized wealth. Our efforts to bring about reforms in municipal government have thus far largely failed to accomplish what was expected of them because we have persistently refused to recognize the principle of majority rule. We have clung tenaciously to the system of checks and balances with all its restraints on popular control. The evils of municipal government are not the evils of democracy, but the evils of a system which limits the power of the majority in the interest of the minority. CHAPTER XI INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND THE CONSTITUTION The eighteenth-century conception of liberty was the outgrowth of the political conditions of that time. Government was largely in the hands of a ruling class who were able to further their own interests at the expense of the many who were unrepresented. It was but natural under these circumstances that the people should seek to limit the exercise of political authority, since every check imposed upon the government lessened the dangers of class rule. The problem which the advocates of political reform had to solve was how to secure the largest measure of individual liberty compatible with an irresponsible government. They were right in believing that this could be accomplished only by building up an elaborate system of constitutional restraints which would narrowly limit the exercise of irresponsible authority. Individual liberty as they understood the term was immunity from unjust interference at the hands of a minority. This was a purely negative conception. It involved nothing more than the idea of protection against the evils of irresponsible government. It was a view of liberty adapted, however, to the needs of the time and served a useful purpose in aiding the movement to curb without destroying the power of the ruling class. Any attempt to push the doctrine of liberty farther than this and make it include more than mere immunity from governmental interference would have been revolutionary. The seventeenth and eighteenth century demand was not for the abolition, but for the limitation of irresponsible authority. It was not for popular government based upon universal suffrage, but for such modifications of the system as would give to the commercial and industrial classes the power to resist all encroachments upon their rights at the hands of the hereditary branches of the government. The basis and guarantee of individual liberty, as the term was then understood, was the popular veto such as was exercised through the House of Commons. This conception of liberty was realized for those represented in any coordinate branch of the government wherever the check and balance stage of political development had been reached.