to obtain control of the government, and that the decisions and actions of the majority are inevitably and unexceptionally democratic?  Such an assertion of the doctrine of popular Sovereignty would bestow absolute Sovereign authority on merely a part of the people.  Majority rule, under certain prescribed conditions, is a necessary constituent of any practicable democratic organization; but the actions or decisions of a majority need not have any binding moral and national authority.  Majority rule is merely one means to an extremely difficult, remote and complicated end; and it is a piece of machinery which is peculiarly liable to get out of order.  Its arbitrary and dangerous tendencies can, as a matter of fact, be checked in many effectual and legitimate ways, of which the most effectual is the cherishing of a tradition, partly expressed in some body of fundamental law, that the true people are, as Bismarck declared, in some measure an invisible multitude of spirits—­the nation of yesterday and to-morrow, organized for its national historical mission.

The phrase popular Sovereignty is, consequently, for us Americans equivalent to the phrase “national Sovereignty.”  The people are not Sovereign as individuals.  They are not Sovereign in reason and morals even when united into a majority.  They become Sovereign only in so far as they succeed in reaching and expressing a collective purpose.  But there is no royal and unimpeachable road to the attainment of such a collective will; and the best means a democratic people can take in order to assert its Sovereign authority with full moral effect is to seek fullness and consistency of national life.  They are Sovereign in so far as they are united in spirit and in purpose; and they are united in so far as they are loyal one to another, to their joint past, and to the Promise of their future.  The Promise of their future may sometimes demand the partial renunciation of their past and the partial sacrifice of certain present interests; but the inevitable friction of all such sacrifices can be mitigated by mutual loyalty and good faith.  Sacrifices of tradition and interest can only be demanded in case they contribute to the national purpose—­to the gradual creation of a higher type of individual and associated life.  Hence it is that an effective increase in national coherence looks in the direction of the democratic consummation—­of the morally and intellectually authoritative expression of the Sovereign popular will.  Both the forging and the functioning of such a will are constructively related to the gradual achievement of the work of individual and social amelioration.