The Majority of the People (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Majority of the People

Opinion after court opinion, constitutional treatise after constitutional treatise, blasting the popular superstition that under the American system of government the nu merically larger section of the community is entitled to impose its political will and its economic interests on the numerically smaller section of the community. In the writings of the generation of learned Justices and legal scholars headed by Matthews and Field, they'will find words far more burning than any they themselves have used as yet in repudiation of a principle which would empower the despotic many to tyrannize over the unprotected few. If The highways and byways of the American past beckon to the minority-minded intellectuals of the future. There is no generation between the 1780's and the 1g4o's which would not yield a harvest of impressive minority-rights quotations. Nothing could be more misleading than presi dent Roosevelt's statement that whereas British aristocrats like Lord Macaulay have always taken their stand on the side of the minority, liberty-loving Americans have always taken their stand on the side of the majority. Whether it be the generation of Dorothy Thompson, of Elihu Root, of Stephen J. Field, of Roger B. Taney, of John C. Cal houn, or of James Madison, in each there have been scores of outstanding American political thinkers who have championed the cause of the minority against the majority.

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