"No; the Constitutions were only a little more fundamental sort of laws.
The majority made and altered them at will. The people were the sole and
supreme final power, and their will was absolute."

"If, then, the majority did not like any existing arrangement, or think
it to their advantage, they could change it as radically as they wished?"

"Certainly; the popular majority could do anything if it was large and
determined enough."

"And the majority, I understand, were the poor, not the rich--the ones
who had the wrong side of the inequalities that prevailed?"

"Emphatically so; the rich were but a handful comparatively."

"Then there was nothing whatever to prevent the people at any time, if
they just willed it, from making an end of their sufferings and
organizing a system like ours which would guarantee their equality and
prosperity?"

"Nothing whatever."

"Then once more I ask you to kindly tell me why, in the name of common
sense, they didn't do it at once and be happy instead of making a
spectacle of themselves so woeful that even a hundred years after it
makes us cry?"

"Because," I replied, "they were taught and believed that the regulation
of industry and commerce and the production and distribution of wealth