One of the most often used and least understood words in the American lexicon is the term "democracy." In the colonial period, it was seldom used, except in denunciation. However, properly defined, it can help us to evaluate the Fair Play settlers in some understandable context. Etymologically stemming from two Greek words, demos, meaning "the people," and kratos, meaning "authority," democracy means "authority in the people" or, we can say, "self-determination." By self-determination is meant the right of the people to decide their own political, economic, and social institutions.
Self-determination in its basic, or political, context can best be explained through James Bryce's definition of a democracy. Lord Bryce said:
The word Democracy has been used ever since the time of Herodotus to denote that form of government in which the ruling power of a State is legally vested, not in any particular class or classes, but in the members of the community as a whole.[1]
Analyzing the key phrases in Bryce's statement, we can best clarify the meaning of political self-determination.
(1) "The ruling power of a State." Self-determination, as it is employed here, concerns the right of the people of Fair Play society to determine their own political institutions. Fair Play society did not constitute a state, but it was a political community, and in that sense Bryce's definition applies. Living outside the legal limit of settlement of Province and Commonwealth, these people could not obtain legal authority for their own rule, so, following the prevalent theory of the social compact, they formed their own government. The result was the annual election, by the people, of the Fair Play tribunal, the source of final authority in the Fair Play territory.
(2) "Is legally vested." Fair Play society was actually illegal; that is to say, the settlements were made in violation of the laws of the Province. However, the extra-legal government which was formed was created by, and responsive to, the popular will. Since the actual authority for rule was vested in the people, it can be considered as legal for the Fair Play community.
(3) "In the members of the community." The members of the Fair Play community, as previously noted, were not strictly resident within the geographic confines of the Fair Play territory. Communities, it has been said, are total ways of life, complexes Of behavior composed of all the institutions necessary to carry on a complete life, formed into a working whole.[2] Self-determination, as it is used here, suggests that the community as a whole participates in the decision-making process.
(4) "Not in any particular class or classes, but in the members of the community as a whole." Bryce's definition here extends the interpretation of "the members of the community." Obviously, if any particular class or classes were vested with the final political authority, then the people as a whole, that is, the Fair Play community, would not exercise self-determination.
The concept of self-determination, carried to an economic context, suggests that the people of the Fair Play community had the right to determine their own economic institutions. This means that they had the right to choose their own portion of land, subject, of course, to the will of the existing community, and to utilize it according to their own needs and interests. This meant that no undemocratic and feudalistic practices, such as primogeniture and entail, could exist. Granted that this is self-determination rather broadly interpreted in an economic context, the question is whether or not these people had the right to choose their own plot of ground and work it as they saw fit, unhampered by any preordained system of discrimination or restriction.
Socially, the idea of self-determination is applied to evaluate the religious institutions, the class structure, and the value system. The application concerns, once again, the authority of the people to determine their own social patterns. It questions whether or not any Fair Play settler could worship according to the dictates of his own conscience. It evaluates the class structure to ascertain whether or not a superimposed caste system ordered the class structure of Fair Play society, rather than a community-determined system in which choice and opportunity provided flexibility and mobility. And finally, it considers whether or not the values of the Fair Play settlers were inculcated by some internal clique or external force, rather than being developed by the members of the community themselves.