Clay began by a heated revival of one of Jackson's worst ideas, namely, that when the people elect a president they thereby mark with the seal of their approval any and every measure with which that favored mortal or his advisers may consider themselves identified, and indorse all his and their previous actions. He at once declared that the people had shown, by the size of Harrison's majority, that they demanded the repeal of the independent treasury act, and the passage of various other laws in accordance with some of his own favorite hobbies, two out of three voters, as a matter of fact, probably never having given a second thought to any of them. Accordingly he proceeded to introduce a whole batch of bills, which he alleged that it was only yielding due respect to the spirit of Democracy to pass forthwith.
Benton, however, even outdid Clay in paying homage to what he was pleased to call the "democratic idea." At this time he speaks of the last session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress as being "barren of measures, and necessarily so, as being the last of an administration superseded by the popular voice and soon to expire; and therefore restricted by a sense of propriety, during the brief remainder of its existence, to the details of business and the routine of service." According to this theory an interregnum of some sixteen weeks would intervene between the terms of service of every two presidents. He also speaks of Tyler as having, when the legislature of Virginia disapproved of a course he wished to follow, resigned his seat "in obedience to the democratic principle," which, according to his views, thus completely nullified the section of the Constitution providing for a six years' term of service in the Senate. In truth Benton, like most other Jacksonian and Jeffersonian leaders, became both foolish and illogical when he began to talk of the bundle of vague abstractions, which he knew collectively as the "democratic principle." Although not so bad as many of his school he had yet gradually worked himself up to a belief that it was almost impious to pay anything but servile heed to the "will of the majority;" and was quite unconscious that to surrender one's own manhood and judgment to a belief in the divine right of kings was only one degree more ignoble, and was not a shadow more logical, and but little more defensible, than it was blindly to deify a majority--not of the whole people, but merely of a small fraction consisting of those who happened to be of a certain sex, to have reached a certain age, to belong to a certain race, and to fulfill some other conditions. In fact there is no natural or divine law in the matter at all; how large a portion of the population should be trusted with the control of the government is a question of expediency merely. In any purely native American community manhood suffrage works infinitely better than would any other system of government, and throughout our country at large, in spite of the large number of ignorant foreign-born or colored voters, it is probably preferable as it stands to any modification of it; but there is no more "natural right" why a white man over twenty-one should vote than there is why a negro woman under eighteen should not. "Civil rights" and "personal freedom" are not terms that necessarily imply the right to vote. People make mistakes when governing themselves, exactly as they make mistakes when governing others; all that can be said is, that in the former case their self-interest is on the side of good government, whereas in the latter it always may be, and often must be, the reverse; so that, when any people reaches a certain stage of mental development and of capacity to take care of its own concerns, it is far better that it should itself take the reins. The distinctive features of the American system are its guarantees of personal independence and individual freedom; that is, as far as possible, it guarantees to each man his right to live as he chooses and to regulate his own private affairs as he wishes, without being interfered with or tyrannized over by an individual, or by an oligarchic minority, or by a democratic majority; while, when the interests of the whole community are at stake, it is found best in the long run to let them be managed in accordance with the wishes of the majority of those presumably concerned.