is created whenever there are privileged classes--that is, classes who
have arrogated to themselves rights while throwing the duties upon
others. In a democracy all have equal political rights. That is the
fundamental political principle. A democracy, then, becomes immoral, if
all have not equal political duties. This is unquestionably the
doctrine which needs to be reiterated and inculcated beyond all others,
if the democracy is to be made sound and permanent. Our orators and
writers never speak of it, and do not seem often to know anything about
it; but the real danger of democracy is, that the classes which have
the power under it will assume all the rights and reject all the
duties--that is, that they will use the political power to plunder
those-who-have. Democracy, in order to be true to itself, and to
develop into a sound working system, must oppose the same cold
resistance to any claims for favor on the ground of poverty, as on the
ground of birth and rank. It can no more admit to public discussion, as
within the range of possible action, any schemes for coddling and
helping wage-receivers than it could entertain schemes for restricting
political power to wage-payers. It must put down schemes for making
"the rich" pay for whatever "the poor" want, just as it tramples on the
old theories that only the rich are fit to regulate society. One needs
but to watch our periodical literature to see the danger that democracy
will be construed as a system of favoring a new privileged class of the
many and the poor.

Holding in mind, now, the notions of liberty and democracy as we have
defined them, we see that it is not altogether a matter of fanfaronade
when the American citizen calls himself a "sovereign." A member of a
free democracy is, in a sense, a sovereign. He has no superior. He has
reached his sovereignty, however, by a process of reduction and
division of power which leaves him no inferior. It is very grand to