It tends, that is, to make individuals seek distinction not by high individual efficiency, but by compromises in the interest of useful popularity.

It would be vain to deny the gravity of this danger or the extent to which, in the best of democracies, the seekers after all kinds of distinction have been hypnotized by an express desire for popularity.

But American statesmen have not always been obliged to choose between Hamilton's unpopular integrity and Henry Clay's unprincipled bidding for popular favor.

The greatest American political leaders have been popular without any personal capitulation; and their success is indicative of what is theoretically the most wholesome relation between individual political liberty and a democratic distribution of effective political power.

The highest and most profitable individual political distinction is that which is won from a large field and from a whole people.