If any proof of his democracy were required, one might point to his
rather surprising statement, which he has repeated more than once, that
the chief value of Congressional debate is to arouse and inform public
opinion. He regards the will of the people as the real source of
governmental policy. Yet he is very impatient of those theories of the
rights of man which found favor in France in the eighteenth century and
have been the mainspring of democratic movements on the Continent of
Europe. He regards political liberty, as we know it in this country, as
a peculiar possession of the English race to which, in all that concerns
jurisprudence, we Americans belong.
The other safeguard against arbitrary action by the combined
legislative-administrative power is, he declares, national respect for
the spirit of those general legal conceptions which, through many
centuries, have been making themselves part and parcel of our racial
instinct. He perceives that the British Constitution, though unwritten,
is as effective as ours and commands obedience fully as much as ours,
and that both appeal to a certain ingrained legal sense, common to all
the English-speaking peoples.
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