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department thereof, but the government itself, the authority which governs; that is to say, the SOVEREIGN. Find the sovereign, and you find what we mean, in this discussion, by government. The right of democratic government depends on the fact, whether the people are or are not the sovereign. Establish the sovereignty of the people, in the positive sense, and you have established the legitimacy of democratic government. Are the people sovereign? This is the point to be considered.

Sovereignty is that which is highest, that which not only governs, but which has the right to govern. The sovereign has the inherent right to command; therefore, whatever he commands is right. The sovereign can do no wrong. His will is, necessarily, the origin and ground of right. The only possible definition of right is, that which the sovereign wills, or commands. Right and Law are, in this sense, coincident. What is law? That which the sovereign ordains. What is not ordained by the sovereign is not law.

Now, if the people are, in their own native might and right, the primary and fundamental sovereignty, then, they have the inherent right to command, and, whatever they command, is law; therefore, right; and, therefore, binding in foro conscientia. Will the reviewer assert this? Is he prepared to take the ground, that the people can do no wrong, and that whatever they do is right, and right, simply, because they do it? No, for he himself says, in his Review for April, 1843, page 390, "Collectively, as individually, the people both can do, and often have done, and will often continue to do, very wrong-very foolishly, ay, very wickedly wrong." If he is right in this assertion, as he unquestionably is, he denies the will of the people to be the source and foundation of right; and even more than this, he denies that it is the exact and infallible expression of right. Then he himself denies, in as plain terms as can be used, his own assertion, that "the people are the primary and fundamental sovereignty."

But the reviewer will probably say, that he never in

tended to assert the moral sovereignty of the people, that what they will must necessarily be binding in morals. All he meant to assert was, the political sovereignty of the people. Very well; can that which is morally wrong be politically right? To maintain the affirmative is to divorce politics from ethics, and to contend that the politician is free from all moral obligation. This, though asserted, practically, by most politicians, the reviewer will hardly maintain in principle. But if not, if he so far conforms to the sublime teachings of the Gospel as to admit that " we should hearken unto God, rather than unto men," he abandons popular sovereignty in the sense he contends for it, brings the people themselves under law, and makes them collectively, as well as individually, amenable to a sovereignty above their own. The will of the people, then, is not sovereign in its own right, and has the right to prevail only so far as it conforms to the law to which the people themselves are subject. Where, now, is the doctrine, that the people, in their own native might and right, are themselves the primary and fundamental sovereignty? Is there no necessity of going behind the people to find that, by virtue of which, their will may become law, their rule legitimate ? *

*We may press this point further. One of our postulates is, that the right to command carries along with it the duty of the subject to obey. According to the reviewer's own admission, the right to command is limited, for the people may, and do, do wrong. But they have no right to command that which is wrong, unless he is prepared to swallow the absurdity, to call it by no worse a name, that it may sometimes be right to do wrong. Now, when the people command, or will, that which is wrong, what is the duty of the subject? Am I then bound to obey? If so, I may be bound in morals to do what is wrong in morals! Surely, the reviewer should be chary of the reductio ad absurdum. Has he settled his doctrine of ethics? Will he tell us what is the foundation of right? Also, what is, for States and for individuals, the criterion of right? What are his solutions of these ethical problems? Does he hold himself able, before solving the ethical problems, to solve the political problems? Which are highest? Does he found his politics on his ethics? Or, with Hobbes, his ethics on his politics? Will he pardon us, if we suggest to him, that these are grave questions, and may, possibly, deserve more serious, as well as more patient and

The reviewer made himself quite merry with us, and was quite witty about the elephant and tortoise. He says, that we rest the world on the State, that is the elephant; the State on the Church, that is, the tortoise. But on what does the Church rest? Will he

profound meditation, than he appears to have bestowed upon them? May not his deference to the "common mind," his horror of scholastic subtlety and scholastic distinctions, and his wish not to exceed, in what he advances, the reach of the "common intelligence," have kept even himself a little too near the surface of things? It may be democratic, but not always wise, to resolve never to think more clearly, more deeply, or more justly, than the multitude.

The reviewer says, "Give us self-reliance, self-development, freedom yes, freedom to make mistakes, if you please, but then also to mend them; to reach the kingdom of heaven' in our own way "Here is the quintessence of modern infidelity. The reviewer, no doubt, felt, that, in writing this sentence, he was uttering a noble sentiment, and the lessons of profoundest wisdom. To a man who has really come to believe in religion, it is painful to see how completely infidel has become modern politics, as well as modern philosophy. The highest agency recognized is man, and all is looked for from man, from man's own inherent nobleness and divinity. The reliance is on self. Self-reliance! heaven itself to be gained in our own way, by our own self-development! How completely does this set at naught the whole teachings of the Word of God! In that, we are taught, that our reliance should be on God, not on an arm of flesh, and that it is through Providence and grace, not through the arachneism, if we may coin a word, of self-development, that we attain to the stature of perfect men in Christ Jesus. Then, again, as to reaching heaven in our own way,—how completely does this set aside Jesus, who declares himself to be the way, the truth, and the life! He is the Door; whoever enters in by any other way is a thief and a robber. Alas! it is this very disposition to go our own way, instead of God's way, that causes all the moral, and no small portion of the physical, evils of this world. How are we deceived! "Ye shall not surely die, but ye shall be as gods." So the age seems to believe in very sooth; and so sets aside the law of God, follows its own instincts, relies on itself, scorns the tree of life, and, with a bold and confident hand, reaches forth and plucks the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All society feels the wound, and groans in the agony of death. Moral disease and social dissolution threaten us on either hand, and still we exclaim, "Give us self-reliance, self-development, and freedom to go to heaven in our own way." Alas! my friend, our own way, man's own way, never yet led to the kingdom of heaven. If you would serve the people, and ransom them from sin and slavery, you must begin by serving your Maker, and making Him, not human self, that on which you rely.

forgive us if we retort his merriment? He rests the world on the State, that is the elephant; the State on the will of the people, that is the tortoise. But on what does the will of the people rest; that is, what is the foundation of the right of the popular will to govThe reductio ad absurdum is, no doubt, an effective weapon, but the reviewer should not forget, that, in unskilful hands, it is apt to raise the laugh in the wrong direction. It did not occur to our friend, in his merriment, and amid the ludicrous images with which his exuberant fancy teemed, that, to his question, on what does the Church rest, we might, possibly, give a very satisfactory answer, namely; THE CHURCH RESTS ON GOD, the Rock of Ages. It was founded by God's own Son, who is its Support, its Head, its Life, its informing Spirit, making it, by his presence, itself "the ground and pillar of truth." Is not this a sufficient support; Alas! they are poor triumphs, which are gained by sneers at the Church of God!

But on what does the reviewer's own tortoise stand? Where is, on his theory, the "Jupiter's hand," by which to hang the chain that sustains the world? The people are not supreme; their will, therefore, cannot be ultimate; then, their sovereignty is not native, underived; then, we must go beyond them, in order to find that on which their sovereignty is founded, and which gives to their acts the character of Law. You deny that this which legitimates their acts, is the will of God; you sneer at us and talk of the reductio ad absurdum, when we say, that no government has, or can have, the right to govern, save as that right is communicated to it by the Supreme Being, the rightful Governor of the Universe, King of kings, and Lord of lords, to whom kings, potentates, peoples, and individuals alike owe allegiance; and yet, you dare not boldly avow the inevitable consequences of your own doctrine, and you yourself really deny the sovereignty of the people, by admitting they both can do, and actually do, do wrong. Do, then, tell us, on what rests the right of their will to govern ?

The reviewer's doctrine, the moment it is so construed as to admit of government at all, denies all individual freedom, and reasserts the worst features of ancient democracy. The grand defect of ancient democracy was, its assertion of the absolute supremacy of the State, and its denial of all personal freedom. Under that democracy, the City was supreme, and man had no rights, political, civil, or personal, till conferred by the City. Even the right to reside and transact business within its limits, was a grant, a privilege, that might be conferred or withheld at the pleasure of the City. The inherent duty of government to maintain the freedom of all the inhabitants of the territory under its jurisdiction, and to labor for the promotion of the well-being of all, was nowhere recognized. The man existed for the City, not the City for the man. The reviewer's doctrine, if understood to assert the native, underived sovereignty of the people as a political individuality, goes the whole length of this. It makes the State supreme, and its will, in all cases, the ground and measure of right. The individual man has no right but the duty of obedience. If the State reduces the great mass to absolute servitude, it does only what it has the right to do. If it can only get a law enacted, it has the right to enact it, and, therefore, to enforce it, let it strike individual or personal freedom as it may.

The absolute duty of man to obey the sovereign authority, we, of course, assert; that man, before the Supreme, has no rights but submission, we of course contend; but solely because absolute submission to the supreme will, or the sovereign authority, is freedom, and the only intelligible definition of freedom that it is possible to give. But the moment this submission is demanded by an authority not sovereign in its own right, beyond the limits prescribed by the higher sovereignty from which it is derived, the moment this obedience is enjoined by an authority which may err, and which often does err, it becomes not freedom but slavery. Now, as the authority of the people is not the highest, as the State may and often does enjoin

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