It is not so much in formal changes made in the Constitution as in the changes introduced through interpretation and usage that we must look for the influence of nineteenth-century democracy. In fact, the formal amendment of the Constitution, as shown in Chapter IV, is practically impossible. But no scheme of government set up for eighteenth-century society could have survived throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century without undergoing important modifications. No century of which we have any knowledge has witnessed so much progress along nearly every line of thought and activity. An industrial and social revolution has brought a new type of society into existence and changed our point of view with reference to nearly every important economic and political question. Our constitutional and legal system, however, has stubbornly resisted the influence of this newer thought, although enough has been conceded to the believers in majority rule from time to time to keep the system of checks from breaking down. Some of the checks which the founders of our government established no longer exist except in form. This is true of the electoral college through which the framers of the Constitution hoped and expected to prevent the majority of the qualified voters from choosing the President. In this case democracy has largely defeated the end of the framers, though the small states, through their disproportionately large representation in the electoral college, exert an influence in Presidential elections out of proportion to their population. The most important change in the practical operation of the system has been accomplished indirectly through the extension of the suffrage in the various states. Fortunately, the qualifications of electors were not fixed by the Federal Constitution. If they had been, it is altogether probable that the suffrage would have been much restricted, since the right to vote was at that time limited to the minority. The state constitutions responded in time to the influence of the democratic movement and manhood suffrage became general. This placed not only the various state governments but also the President and the House of Representatives upon a basis which was popular in theory if not in fact. Much remained and still remains to be done in the matter of perfecting the party system and the various organs for formulating and expressing public opinion with reference to political questions, before there will be any assurance that even these branches of the general government will always represent public sentiment.