The kind of government for which the Jeffersonian democracy successfully battled for more than a century was thus repudiated; centralization was invited; State rights were assassinated in the very citadel of State rights. The charter of local self-government become a scrap of paper, the way is open for the obliteration of the States in all their essential functions and the erection of a Federal Government more powerful than anything of which Alexander Hamilton dared to dream.
When the history of these times comes to be written it may be said of Woodrow Wilson: he rose to world celebrity by circumstance rather than by character. He was favored of the gods. He possessed a bright, forceful mind. His achievements were thrust upon him. Though it sometimes ran away with him, his pen possessed extraordinary facility. Thus he was ever able to put his best foot foremost. Never in the larger sense a leader of men as were Chatham and Fox, as were Washington, Clay and Lincoln; nor of ideas as were Rousseau, Voltaire and Franklin, he had the subtle tenacity of Louis the Eleventh of France, the keen foresight of Richelieu with a talent for the surprising which would have raised him to eminence in journalism. In short he was an opportunist void of conviction and indifferent to consistency.
The pen is mightier than the sword only when it has behind it a heart as well as a brain. He who wields it must be brave, upright and steadfast. We are giving our Chief Executive enormous powers. As a rule his wishes prevail. His name becomes the symbol of party loyalty. Yet it is after all a figure of speech not a personality that appeals to our sense of duty without necessarily engaging our affection.
Historic Republicanism is likewise dead, as dead as historic Democracy, only in both cases the labels surviving.
We are told by Herbert Spencer that the political superstition of the past having been the divine right of kings, the political superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments and he might have said of peoples. The oil of anointing seems unawares, he thinks, to have dripped from the head of the one upon the heads of the many, and given sacredness to them also, and to their decrees.