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the Suffrage Movement, by the Governor of New Hampshire in his letter to the Governor of Rhode Island, refusing to surrender Mr. Dorr, and implied in Governor Morton's and ExPresident Van Buren's letters to the Committee of the great Clam-bake last fall, at Medbury Grove.

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But though within a few years this theory of the absolute right of the majority to govern has been thought by many to be the democratic theory, I demand when and upon what authority it came to be the democratic doctrine? Democracy, if we take the word strictly, according to its etymological sense, and its original historical application, means the government that vests in and is administered by the common people, distinguished from the aristocracy, or Eupatrids. The Greek Demos does not correspond to the American use of the word People; but very nearly to what we mean by the phrase common people; and the government of Athens was called a democracy, not because it was founded on the principle that the majority have the inherent and absolute right to govern, a principle not recognized at all by the Athenian Democracy, but because it was in the hands, not exclusively of the Eupatrids, but of the inhabitants of the Demes, or wards, that is, of agriculturalists, merchants, traders, artisans and mariners. Taking the word in a more modern sense, as used in this country, when applied to the form of the government, it implies that government vests in, and should be administered by, the whole people, rather than that it vests in, and should be administered by, the majority. None of the great writers on the origin of government, so far as I am informed, lay down this principle of the absolute right of the majority to govern; that is, according to the Editor of the Democratic Review, to ordain the constitution; that is, again, to form what Locke and Rousseau call the social compact. Rousseau expressly denies the principle, and contends that "the law of the plurality of suffrages is itself conventional, and presupposes, at least at one time, unanimity."

Furthermore, we are now told that the rule of the majority is founded in natural right, that it subsists by the truest and highest legitimacy of natural right, and of the only "divine right we

can know in political affairs." Is this so? I have studied democracy to little purpose, if it be not democratic to assert that one man is not born with the natural right to govern another. Men are by no means born equal, but one is not born, save through municipal regulation, naturally subject to the will of another. I have yet to find the man who has, in a political sense, the natural right to be my master. If no one man has naturally this right, how can two men united have it? Of any given three men two are the majority; any two men will, if the majority have the inherent and absolute right to govern, have the natural, the divine right to govern the third. How can this be proved to be so Have my two neighbors the absolute right to govern me? Whence do they obtain this right?

But, perhaps, it is not intended to assert the right of the majority to govern within so limited a sphere, but merely the majority of a people, of a state, or political community. The principle intended to be laid down, we presume, is, that the majority of every political community have the right to determine and administer the government of the whole community. But whence the political community itself? "How does a people," in the language of Rousseau, "become a people?" The will of the majority of a people is the sovereign, but what is the authority that constitutes a people a people, or a political community? There must be an act, and an act of sovereignty, logically at least, prior to the will of the majority; consequently a sovereign prior to the sovereign! But let this pass; what, in the next place, is the foundation of this right of the majority to govern? Whence do a hundred men obtain the right to make their will prevail over the ninety and nine of their fellow men, who have a different will, and perhaps one both wiser and juster? Do not answer me by asserting that the majority have a natural, a divine right to rule, for it is of this I demand the proof. Nothing is admitted to be a natural right not naturally demonstrable. If man and civil society are conceivable without this right, then is not this a natural right, but at best a conventional right. If we assume prior to civil society a state of nature, then, assuredly, the right of the majority cannot be a na

tural right; for in that state no one man, no body of men, has any right to govern another. If we reject the fiction of a state of, nature, and assume man as naturally social, as always existing in society, then, the right of the majority to govern can exist only as a positive right, as a mere regulation adopted by society itself.

Whence, again, we ask, the origin and foundation of this assumed right of the majority? Have the majority the right to govern because they are the strongest? This would identify right and might, and legitimate every government able to maintain itself. Every act of power, however oppressive, on this ground, would be right, just. This would lead us to a length somewhat beyond that which we democrats are generally willing to go, and somewhat beyond that which the boldest advocates of despotism have ever yet had the hardihood to assert.

Moreover, even admitting the right of the majority to govern, the rule is, in fact, impracticable. The consent of the majority was never yet obtained to any constitution ever adopted, or to any act of any legislation ever known. It is nonsense to talk about majorities. There has never yet been a contrivance adopted by which we could collect anything more for the will of the majority than the will of a small minority. In the first place, women, constituting onehalf of the community, are altogether excluded; in the second place, all under a certain age are always debarred from the right to vote; in the third place, there is always, in the most exciting times, a large number of citizens that are quiescent and cannot be brought to the polls, or are kept from them through business, or sickness in themselves, families or friends; and in the fourth and last place, there is a large number, constituting in most communities even a majority, who either have no will of their own, or none they dare express.

Again, this right of the majority to govern strikes at the foundation of all morals, by rendering the distinction between right and wrong not fixed and eternal, but arbitrary and variable. If the majority have the right to govern, the minority are bound to obey. Nothing is better established than that the right to command involves the correlative duty of obedience. The one can

not exist without the other. The minority are bound then by the law of nature, and therefore by the law of God, to obey the majority. But majorities fluctuate; the minority of yesterday is the majority of to-day; and the majority of to-day will be the minority of to-morrow; consequently, what was wrong yesterday is right today, and will be wrong again to-morrow. Is it in this nineteenth century, and in this Christian land, we are to be taught this doctrine, which would have revolted even a pagan Greek or Roman? We had thought that right, whether in religion, morals or politics, was independent of the accidents of time and space, and not liable to be affected by the fact of its being supported by majorities or only by minorities. Right is right, eternally the same, whether all the world agree to own it or to disown it; wherefore, then, make it dependent on the will of majorities? Even Mr. Jefferson recognizes a standard of right, nay, a sovereign above the will of the majority; for he contends that the will of the majority can rightfully prevail only on condition that it is reasonable.

Nor is this all. The rule in question reduces the minority to absolute slavery. We who chance to be in the minority are completely disfranchised. We are wholly at the mercy of the majority. We hold our property, our wives, our children and our lives even, at their sovereign will and pleasure. If the majority take it into their heads to make a new and arbitrary division of property, however unjust, we shall not only be impotent to resist, but we shall not have even the right to complain. Conscience will be no shield. The authority of the absolute sovereign extends, and must needs extend to spiritual matters as well as to temporal. The creed the majority are pleased to impose, the minority must in all meekness receive; and the form of religious worship the majority are good enough to prescribe, the minority must make it a matter of conscience to observe. Whatever has been done under the most absolute monarchy or the most lawless aristocracy, may be reenacted, and legitimately, too, under our purely democratic forms of govern-ment, if the rule I am controverting be once erected into a principle.

The doctrine that the majority have

the inherent right to rule, not only destroys all solid ground for morality, not only destroys all possibility of free dom for minorities, but its effects, so far as it is believed and acted upon, are most disastrous, and cannot be too earnestly deprecated. It creates a multitude of demagogues, professing a world of love for the dear people, and lauding popular virtue and popular sovereignty, the better to fatten on popular ignorance and credulity; it makes public men lax in their morals; paves the way for gross bribery and corruption; generates a habit of appealing from truth and justice, wisdom and virtue, to the mere force of numbers; destroys all manliness of character, all independence of thought and action, and makes one weak and vacillating, a time-server and a coward. It perverts inquiry, and leads us to ask, when it concerns a candidate for office, not who is the most honest, the most capable, but who will command the most votes? and when it concerns a measure, not what is just, wise, necessary for the public good, but what measure can the majority be induced to support?

Already do we begin to feel the sad effects of this doctrine. Public virtue has become an empty name. Nothing is more rare than the statesman who will stand up for what he honestly be lieves to be right, when he must stand up alone. Go into your halls of legislation, and show the wisdom and justice of the policy you propose, so clearly as to flash general and instantaneous conviction; what then? Will it be adopted? We doubt whether our whole political history affords one instance of the adoption of a measure merely on the ground of its justice, or of its rejection solely on the ground of the general conviction produced by the discussion of its injustice. The history of the proceedings of our legislative bodies is full of sadness, and makes one almost despair of his race. Even a good measure is rarely carried in a straightforward way, by fair and open means. Professing the greatest respect for, and confidence in, the people, few of us dare risk the success of what we honestly believe a good measure on its own merits; we intrigue and manœuvre to carry it, as much as if it were a piece of consummate villainy. A plain, honest, blunt-spoken man, who speaks always the plain honest truth, would

be looked upon in the political world as a simpleton; all parties would regard him as a man not to be trusted, whose imprudence would ruin them. The whole study is to manœuvre so as to secure a majority of voices for our party, for our men and for our measures, which are usually only such measures as we think will most likely place the majority on our side, and fill all offices with men of our party.

I confess that I grow heartily sick of this doctrine, that "the majority has the right to govern." It not only has the tendency I have stated, but what is worse, it declares this tendency legitimate. If the majority have the right to rule, then I should study to be always on the side of the majority. And yet, a true man finds it exceedingly difficult to reconcile himself to this. There is, if I mistake not, within every man who can lay the least claim to correct moral feeling, that which looks with contempt on the puny creature who makes the decision of the majority his rule of action. He who wants the firmness to stand up alone, like Socrates in face of the Thirty Tyrants, and demand that right be respected, that justice be done, is unfit to be called a statesman, ay, or even a man. A man has no business with what the majority think, will, say, do, or will approve as a rule of action; if he will be a man, and maintain the rights and dignity of manhood, he will inquire only for what truth and justice, wisdom and virtue demand at his hands, and that he will do, whether left to stand alone, or followed by the crowd; whether held up as one whom the young must love and study to imitate, or sneered at as singular, branded as seditious, or crucified between two thieves as a blasphemer. He will dare be a man, dare be himself, and to speak and act according to his own honest convictions and the law of God, as revealed to him in the Word of the Highest. Professions of freedom, of love of liberty, of devotion to her cause, are mere wind, when there wants the power to live and to die in defence of truth and justice. A free government is mere mockery, a mere farce, where every man feels that he is bound to consult and conform to the will of an irresponsible majority. Free minds, free hearts, free souls, are the materials, and the only materials out of which free

governments are constructed. And is he free in heart, mind, soul or body, who feels himself bound to the triumphal car of the majority, to be dragged whithersoever its drivers please? Is he the man to speak out the lessons of truth and wisdom when most they are needed; to stand by the right when all have deserted it; and to plead for the wronged and down-trodden when all are dumb, he who holds that the will of the majority is that to which his loyalty is morally due?

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I am told, however, that this absolute right of the simple numerical majority to govern, is to be recognized only in forming the constitution, or drawing up what we may call the fundamental law or ground-law of the commonwealth; and that under this constitution, for the practical administration of government, and the enacting of special laws, another rule should be adopted-practical checks for restraining the ascendency of a temporary majority should be multiplied. But this assurance partakes more of the political theorist than of the practical statesman, and of the ardor of youth than the experience of age. It is too much like the man's undertaking to keep out the crows by shutting his park gates. If a simple majority are competent to alter the constitution at their pleasure, what avails the provision of the constitution that two-thirds are necessary to the passage of a given law? How easy would it be for the majority to overrule this provision, by altering the constitution itself. Say, for instance, the controversy between Catholics 'and Protestants should rage in this commonwealth of Massachusetts; men's minds become heated; their feelings enraged and embittered; and the Protestants, having a clear majority, resolve that no Catholic shall any longer be tolerated in the commonwealth; what shall prevent them from passing a law excluding all Catholics from the state? Suppose that to the passing of such a law the assent of two-thirds or three-fourths of the legislature be necessary; suppose, even, that both your executive and your

judiciary have a veto upon it; still with the present perfection of the caucus system, nothing would be easier than to call a caucus of the people, and incorporate into the constitution a clause proscribing for ever the Catholic form of faith and worship. Whenever the majority wanted a law that could not be obtained by existing constitutional provisions, all they would have to do, would be to call a convention and adjust the provisions of the constitution to their wishes. Constitutional checks and restraints are nugatory when a simple majority of the people are competent at any time to overrule them. I have not at this moment, where I write, access to the constitutions of the several states, but I cannot now call to mind a single state, in which the constitution is left alterable at the mere pleasure of the majority. The Constitution of the Union is alterable only by the consent of three-fourths of the states, and a convention for altering it cannot be called without the assent of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states. In none of the states can a convention be called without the authority of the legislature, and I believe that there is not a single state, unless it be some of the new states, whose constitutions I have not examined, in which the simple majority of the legislature is at all times competent to call a convention. Our fathers all felt that the constitution, the ground-law of the commonwealth, should not be alterable at the pleasure of the majority, and they uniformly made the assent of more than a majority necessary. They, however, imposed the restraint for the most part, not in the final voting on the constitution, but in the preliminary steps necessary to the calling of a convention, or to the proposing of amendments to the constitution to be adopted. But, all these amount to nothing, and we are no longer tied up by these forms, by the necessity of getting a vote of two-thirds of the legislature, or of two successive legislatures, in order to get a convention, if this new doctrine which places the caucus on a par with the convention obtains, and a

Boston Quarterly Review, January, 1838. Art. Democracy, pp. 38-42. I wish my democratic friends who accuse me of turning conservative would read the whole article here referred to; it will show them that I have from the first protested against this doctrine of the right of the majority to govern.

simple majority becomes able, at any moment, to alter the constitution.

But this is not all. The doctrine of the right of the majority to rule, at least to draw up and ordain the constitution, is not objectionable merely because it enables the majority to alter the constitution at will, but because it has a subtle yet powerful influence in substituting the opinions, the wishes, and will of the majority for the time, informally expressed, for the will of the people formally and solemnly expressed in the constitution and laws. If the majority have, by the law of nature and the ordinance of God, the right to govern, the constitution is a mere form, and of no value any further than it serves as an index to the will of the majority. What we want is the real will of the majority. That will, however expressed, is the true, legitimate sovereign, and has, therefore, the right in all cases to prevail. The constitution becomes mere wastepaper. What is the use of appealing to the shadow when you have got the substance? Mr. Madison set the example, and this is the only avowed instance I find prior to General Jackson, of regarding the will of the majority, not constitutionally expressed, as paramount to the constitution itself. He held a United States' Bank to be unconstitutional, and on that ground had refused his assent to a bill chartering one. Subsequently, however, he signed the bill chartering the late bank of the United States. What was his justification? "A power repeatedly exercised by Congress, and acquiesced in by the people, is to be taken as constitutional." This dictum virtually abolishes the constitution. If we lay the stress on the acquiescence of the people, it leaves the majority always free to pass any law the majority of the people will tolerate; which is precisely the case we should be in had we no constitution at all. If we lay the stress on repeated, then the dictum would make wrong by repetition become right; if on the repeated exercise of the power by Congress, then it would give to the majority in Congress the right to alter, amend, even to make the constitution, in opposition to the provisions of the constitution itself. Yet ever since the chartering of the bank of the United States, the tendency to regard the will of the

majority, however expressed, as the real sovereign, has been developing itself more and more, and has at length virtually, to all practical purposes, set aside the constitution; and rightfully so, too, if the majority have the natural and inherent right to govern. No man who holds the doctrine we are controverting has any right to complain of the majority, however they may trample on the letter and the spirit of the constitution. Why is not the majority of to-day equal to the majority that formed the constitution? And why shall the majority of yesterday have power to hamper and fetter the majority of to-day? It is easy to see where this doctrine leads. We have had practical demonstrations of its tendency in the support given by Congress to the United States' Bank, to internal improvements, to protective tariffs, and bills for distributing the proceeds of the public lands among the states, and in the instances already mentioned of Michigan and Rhode Island. Let it become the settled doctrine of the country, and it is fast becoming so, and our liberties are gone; constitutional freedom, constitutional government has proved a failure, an illusion; and nothing remains for us but absolute submission to the caprice of an irresponsible majority. Every act will be held to be constitutional that the legislature has the ability to pass and the administration the power to enforce; might will swallow up right, and we shall have a worse than oriental despotism; for the despotism of one man may be glutted with victims, that of the many never, but like the daughters of the horse-leech, will cry always, "Give, give.'

I have dwelt the longer on this point, because I hold it of vital importance. Here is the rock on which we are likely to split. Our danger does not lie in the prevalence of aristocratic doctrines. Doubtless there is with us enough of aristocratic feeling, and of aristocratic practice; but no man knowingly advocates publicly aristocratic doctrines. The aristocrat with us no longer seeks to gain his ends by making open war on the people and laboring to arrest the popular tendency; but by chiming in with the popular feeling and exaggerating the popular tendency. Satan, when he has an object to gain, always disguises himself as an angel

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