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democracy, constitutional 511

W. E. B. Du Bois on the Town Meeting and Democracy

In his autobiography, African-American scholar and I was 13 or 14 years of age and a student in the
civil rights pioneer, W. E. B. Du Bois recounted how the small high school with two teachers and perhaps 25
Great Barrington, Massachusetts, town meetings in the pupils. The high school was not too popular in this
1880s influenced his views about democracy and rural part of New England and received from the
civic life. town a much too small appropriation. But the thing
that exasperated me was that every Spring at Town
From early years, I attended the town meeting every
Meeting, which I religiously attended, this huge,
Spring and in the upper front room in that little red
ragged old man came down from the hills and for an
brick Town Hall, fronted by a Roman “victory” com-
hour or more reviled the high school and demanded
memorating the Civil War, I listened to the citizens
its discontinuance.
discuss things about which I knew and had opinions:
I remember distinctly how furious I used to get at
streets and bridges and schools, and particularly the
the stolid town folk, who sat and listened to him. He
high school, an institution comparatively new. We
was nothing and nobody. Yet the town heard him
had in the town several picturesque hermits, usually
gravely because be was a citizen and property-holder
retrograde Americans of old families. There was
on a small scale and when he was through, they
Crosby, the gunsmith who lived in a lovely dale with
calmly voted the usual funds for the high school.
brook, waterfall and water wheel. He was a frightful
Gradually as I grew up, I began to see that this was
apparition but we boys often ventured to visit him.
the essence of democracy: listening to the other man’s
Particularly there was Baretown Beebe, who came
opinion and then voting your own, honestly and
from forest fastnesses which I never penetrated. He
intelligently.
was a particularly dirty, ragged, fat old man, who used
Source: Du Bois, W. E. B. (1968). The autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois (pp. 91–92).
to come down regularly from his rocks and woods New York: International Publishers.
and denounce high school education and expense.

United States balances) between the three branches of federal govern-
The formative era of the U.S. version of an effective con- ment (executive, legislative, and judicial) was consoli-
stitutional democracy is identified primarily with Thomas dated in 1803 with the Marbury v. Madison decision
Jefferson (1743–1826). His agenda of civil nationalism rendered by the Supreme Court.That decision enshrined
emphasized individual freedoms and the separation of the doctrine of judicial review in U.S. law, providing an
church and state. The core of the 1776 Declaration of impartial judiciary with the ultimate authority.
Independence was “life, liberty and the pursuit of happi-
ness.” The apex of the formative era was the drafting of Canada
a constitution in 1787. The Constitution vested sover- In Canada the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982
eignty in the U.S. people (excluding nonwhites, whose shows how a country with more than a century of open-
ability to be citizens was in doubt well into the twentieth ness and liberty transforms its legal mechanism to
century) through a hybrid of federal authority and indi- address a political crisis. Canada has had a semblance of
vidual states, created the presidency, and granted the fed- a constitutional democracy since the 1867 British North
eral government the ability to tax citizens and command America Act.That act ushered in a degree of sovereignty,
troops. which gradually strengthened to amount to a full author-
The 1791 Bill of Rights assured individual rights and ity of the Canadian government, within a federal struc-
civil liberties such as freedoms of speech, peaceful assem- ture, ending British colonial rule. Nevertheless, during the
bly, and due process.The balance of powers (checks and 1970s a secessionist movement in Quebec, a primarily