truth. Nevertheless the founders of the Constitution did succeed in
giving some effect to their distrust of the democratic principle, no
matter how conservatively defined; and this was at once a grave error on
their part and a grave misfortune for the American state. Founded as the
national government is, partly on a distrust of the American democracy,
it has always tended to make the democracy somewhat suspicious of the
national government. This mutual suspicion, while it has been limited in
scope and diminished by the action of time, constitutes a manifest
impediment to the efficient action of the American political system. The
great lesson of American political experience, as we shall see, is
rather that of interdependence than of incompatibility between an
efficient national organization and a group of radical democratic
institutions and ideals; and the meaning of this lesson has been
obscured, because the Federal organization has not been constituted in a
sufficiently democratic spirit, and because, consequently, it has tended
to provoke distrust on the part of good democrats. At every stage in the
history of American political ideas and practice we shall meet with the
unfortunate effects of this partial antagonism.

The error of the Federalists can, however, be excused by many
extenuating circumstances. Democracy as an ideal was misunderstood in
1786, and it was possessed of little or no standing in theory or
tradition. Moreover, the radical American democrats were doing much to
deserve the misgivings of the Federalists. Their ideas were narrow,
impracticable, and hazardous; and they were opposed to the essential
political need of the time--viz. the constitution of an efficient
Federal government. The Federalists may have misinterpreted and
perverted the proper purpose of American national organization, but they
could have avoided such misinterpretation only by an extraordinary
display of political insight and a heroic superiority to natural