have not taken as good care to guard the people, as individuals, against the people, as a body politic. They have limited the government, which is a creature of the body politic, but they have left the body politic itself in possession of unlimited sovereignty. In denying the sovereignty of the people, we mean to deny to the body politic unlimited authority, or the right to act at all, in any way, or by any agents whatever, on any except certain specific objects, indispensable to the maintenance of social order, and, if the phrase will be taken strictly, the common weal.

But the doctrine of the popular sovereignty, whatever its unsoundness or dangerous tendency, when asserted without any qualifications, has had an important mission to execute, and it has done no mean service to Humanity. From the moment it was first asserted, up to the present, it has been the rallying point of the friends of freedom and progress; and, as things have heretofore been, neither freedom nor progress were possible to be attained without it. It is not for nothing, then, that the friends of freedom and progress, in this and other countries, cling to the sovereignty of the people; and we are not to be astonished, if they now and then stretch it somewhat beyond its legitimate bounds, and continue to defend it, even after its mission is perfected. We do not willingly let go a doctrine which has stood us in good stead in our days of darkness and trial; nor is it an easy matter for us to determine with precision the exact amount of good it has done, or may yet do us. Moreover, we are slow to learn that in contending for the same form of words, we are not always contending for the same doctrine, and that in giving up an old form of words, we do not necessarily give up the old truth we had loved. Words ever change their import as change the circumstances amid which they are uttered. The form of words, which yesterday contained the doctrine of progress, to-day contains a doctrine which would

carry us backward. The watchword of liberty under one set of circumstances becomes under another set of circumstances the watchword of tyranny. It is the part of the wise man to note these changes, and to seek out new watchwords as often as the old ones lose their primitive meaning.

So long as the sovereignty of the people was the denial of the sovereignty of kings, hierarchies, and nobilities, it was true, and was the doctrine of progress. The assertion of the sovereignty of the people was necessary to legitimate popular liberty. In every human heart, there is a more or less lively sense of legitimacy. Men revolt from one authority, not because it oppresses them, or restrains them in the free use of their persons or property, but because they regard it as illegitimate, as a usurper; they submit to another authority and uphold it, although it impose severe burdens, take the fruits of their labors to squander on its pleasures, their daughters for its debaucheries, and their sons for its battles, because they hold it to be legitimate, the rightful sovereign, which they are bound in conscience to obey. To uphold the first, or to resist the last, would in their estimation be alike disloyal. This sense of legitimacy meets us every where throughout the whole of modern history. It has made the people sustain a corrupt and demoralizing hierarchy, cling to old forms of government, and fight for old abuses, long after the reformer has appeared to demand meliorations from which they could not fail to profit. It is so deeply rooted in modern civilization, indeed, in human nature itself, that to eradicate it is impossible. In point of fact, we ought not to eradicate it even if we could; for at bottom, it is one of the noblest attributes, we may say, the distinguishing attribute, of man himself, that, without which man would cease to be man. It is, in the last analysis, identical with the sense of right, the correlative of the sense of duty. Take it away, and right and wrong would be empty names, man could acknowledge no sovereign, feel no obligation,

and never be made to comprehend the fact that he has rights. The principle in itself is good, and must be retained, if man is to be preserved. But it depends almost entirely on circumstances, whether the sense of legitimacy shall be combined with a truth, or with a falsehood. If the individual be enlightened so as to discern the true sovereign, then this sense of legitimacy makes him invincible in the support or defence of the right, of freedom, of progress; but if he be darkened by ignorance or warped by prejudice, so as to mistake the true sovereign for the one who is no sovereign, then does it make him equally invincible in the support and defence of the wrong, the bitter and untiring foe of freedom and progress.

Now at that period of modern history, when the popular movement began to manifest itself, legitimacy was almost exclusively attached to the hereditary monarch, and passive obedience was the order of the day. Opposition to the monarch was revolting to the general sense of right; and yet, the cause of the people could not advance without opposing him, and in some instances not without dethroning and even decapitating him. The monarch was held to be sacred and inviolable; but so long as he was so held, the cause of the people must sleep. The people must desist from their efforts to meliorate their condition, unless they could discover some means by which opposition to the hereditary monarch should become sacred and venerable in the eyes of conscience. To act against their sense of right, is what the people never do. A mob may be excited; and, in the intoxication of the moment, it may trample on justice and humanity; but the people are always serious, conscientious in what they do. Long ages will they endure the most grievous wrongs and the most grinding oppression; but to relieve themselves at the expense of what they conceive to be justice, that will they do never. Knowingly, intentionally, they never do wrong. When they have laid it down or found it laid down, in their conscience, that the hereditary monarch is the legiti

mate sovereign, they gather round each, the smallest even of his prerogatives, and defend it at the sacrifice of their lives.

Here, we perceive, was a serious difficulty to be removed. The physical power was on the side of the people; but physical power is as chaff before the wind, whenever it has to encounter spiritual might. The people had numbers and the physical strength to gain their freedom, but they dared not. Conscience dis

armed them. They felt that they were bound to obey the monarch, and they had no courage to resist him. The stoutest and bravest are children and cowards in a war against conscience. What could be done? How could opposition to the monarch be made to appear justifiable to those, who had been taught and long accustomed to hold him sacred and inviolable? Assuredly, by denying his absolute sovereignty, that is, his legitimacy. But this alone was not enough. Sovereignty must be somewhere. There must be a sovereign; we feel that there is somewhere an authority we are bound to obey. Where is it? If the monarch be not sovereign, who or what is? Had this question been asked at Runnymede, it might have been answered that the nobles were sovereigns; but Louis XI. in France and the Tudors in England had rendered such an answer invalid. The old feudal chiefs had succumbed to the lord paramount, and ceased to be regarded as legitimate sovereigns by the people. If the question had been asked of Hildebrand, he might have said, that God is the legitimate sovereign; but this, at the time of which we speak, would only have been reasserting the supremacy of the Church, which Protestantism had denied. The philosopher might have answered it, as we have answered it today, in favor of justice; but the people were not philosophers then, and to have told them to submit to justice, would only have been to tell them to obey the laws, which again would only have been telling them to obey the monarch from whom the laws emanated.

Under these circumstances it is evident, that the

legitimacy of the monarch could be denied only in favor of the people. The people was the only competitor of the king for the throne that it was possible to set up. The people, not the king, is the legitimate sovereign, was the only answer the question. admitted. All government is for the good of the people, and every government, which fails to effect the good of the people, is by that fact rendered illegitimate, and may be lawfully opposed. Kings are crowned to protect the rights and promote the interests of the people, and are, therefore, answerable to the people for the use they make of the power given them. The people, in fine, are superior to kings and may judge them. The people then are the sovereign authority. "The people are sovereign; " what words, when first they were uttered! The moment they were uttered, the people sprang into being and were a power, a power clothed with legitimacy and capable of imparting sanctity and inviolability to its adherents. The people could now legitimate their opposition to the hereditary monarch. In opposing him, they were but calling its servant to an account of his stewardship. They were not contending against just authority, for license, for disorder, but for order, for liberty, for the legitimate sovereign against the usurper. They were able, therefore, to shelter the Reformer, and to save him from those compunctions of conscience with which, otherwise, he would have been visited for opposing an authority he had been taught to reverence and long accustomed to obey. The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people made their cause a legitimate, a holy cause, and gave men the right and made it their duty to assert and maintain it.

In this way, the doctrine of the popular sovereignty has wrought out deliverance for the people. It has made the people kings and priests, and declared it sacrilege to touch the least of their prerogatives. This is its victory for Humanity. In the Old World, where the masses are trodden down by the privileged orders, it may still have a mission. There it may not