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ARTICLE VII.-GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.

POPULAR elections in the United States, and the discussions incident thereto, keep the public mind in a state of vigilant attention to the political issues of the day, and diffuse a general intelligence of which we justly boast. Among the many advantages of our system, we count it not the least, that it is educational. As a school, however, for acquiring true and just views of government, it has one very great defect. Nearly all our political discussions relate to some pending election, where the whole question practically turns on the success of a particular candidate for office. In this way, the true principle in issue becomes mixed up with so many extraneous influences, that it is in danger of being wholly lost sight of, or, at least, of being so perverted, as to lose the symmetry which properly belongs to it.

In Theology, we have a perfect standard which we hold up to men, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear. In the law we have an inflexible standard, which courts guard with jealous care from every extraneous influence. We separate the law from the fact and bring it to the test of a fixed and established standard. But the only standard in a popular election is the majority of votes. Personal prejudice against, and personal partiality for a candidate, largely influence the canvass. In the discussions which precede an election, no candidate is likely to come before the people with any unwelcome truth. He can hardly be expected to combat popular errors, or to breast the current of popular prejudice. The temptation to fall in with the current-to increase it--and to take advantage of it, is too strong for candidates to resist.

Now, if there be a science of government-if government has its true philosophy founded in immutable principles, are we not in danger of having these principles perverted by the loose philosophies manufactured in our popular elections? The statement of the simplest elementary truths, as that

wherever there is government, there must be the governedthat government is the supreme human authority over the people, and that the people are under it-would fall too harshly on the ear, to be ever spoken by any candidate soliciting votes. All our forms of expression have been so framed, as to convey the idea, that in these free United States, the people are not under the government, but over it. The people rule. The people are sovereign. The will of the people is supreme. We call the government an agent, thereby implying that its powers may be revoked at pleasure and controlled during their continuance. We call the government a compact, thereby implying that it is only an agreement and not an authority. If ever we venture to call it a government, we are careful to qualify the expression by large reservations of sovereignty to the people. We have had the doctrine of popular sovereignty in many forms. We have had the great popular sovereignty of the people of the United States. We have had the lesser popular sovereignty of the people of the respective States or State sovereignty. We then had the popular sovereignty of the people of the territories; and, last of all, we had confederate popular sovereignty, or that the people within the limits of the attempted Southern confederacy were sovereign. And then came the contest between the government of the United States, the only true sovereignty known to the Constitution, and all these false forms of popular sovereignty. Then came the trial which was to test not only the strength of our political fabric, but the soundness of current political theories. The government established by the Constitution in immutable principles, acting on its right of self-preservation by force, and steadily refusing to abdicate its authority by concession or negotiation, asserted its supremacy over all the false sovereignties arrayed against it, and, at the end of the conflict, stood forth, not only victorious in arms, but stronger in the respect, confidence, and affection of the American people than it ever was before. During the war, we witnessed the singular spectacle of men in numberless instances volunteering to fight against the political theories for which they voted at the polls. It will be a still more singular spec

tacle, if Southern rebels shall renounce the political theories for which they have always declared they were ready to die, and shall acquiesce in principles they have always professed to abhor. It is safe for us to act on the belief, that God has so made men that they will submit to a just government.

We call the government of the United States the best ever made. Our sacrifices in maintaining and preserving it have been costly. The past has its lessons for the people. They may learn that it is not safe to make government their plaything. They may learn that liberty without its just restraints becomes anarchy. They may learn that false doctrines long inculcated will in the end be acted on, and surely lead to disorder. There is, as it seems to us, no need in the future of our talking so much about liberty. The real danger to liberty is through popular license and insubordination. There is need of more talk about the paramount duty of obedience to government, and of less about popular sovereignty, and the popular will. Because this is the freest and best government in the world, we hold that for that very reason it ought to be the best obeyed.

Government is instituted among men to secure certain great ends. For this purpose it must have an artificial machinery. It is a machine. We call it a machine, and speak of its wheels and their revolutions. Like all machines, it must operate on its own principles of construction. We have seen that demonstrated. Our machine of government was constructed to move on the principles of justice and liberty! All the wit of man could not make it run on slavery. Like all machines, it must be so constructed as to restrain, regulate, and apply the motive power. A water wheel erected on a river, so as to revolve with the current, but having no provision for restraining the motive power of the river, and applying it to a proposed end, would not be a machine. So a political structure moved by the popular will, but having no provision for restraining and regulating the popular will, and applying it to a proposed end, would not be a government. In constructing machines, we first ascertain the laws which the Creator has imposed on matter, and conforming our work

to these laws, rely for success on their uniform operation. So in government, true statesmanship consists in ascertaining the laws which the Creator has imposed on man, and acting in conformity with them. If we violate these great laws, we can no more expect success in the one case than in the other.

It has been a favorite theory with political writers, that government is founded on compact. A compact binds those who make it, but nobody else. On what principle can a majority bind the minority by a compact or agreement? And how can one generation of men bind their posterity by a compact? The Declaration of Independence has been supposed to assert the doctrine of compact, when it declares that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' But who are the governed? All natural persons, men, women, and children, a large part of whom are incapable of any other than an implied or presumed consent. The Declaration of Independence says that all these "are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that to secure these rights governments are instituted." Here is an express declaration that men cannot alienate their own natural rights, much less the natural rights of others, by any compact. The consent spoken of is that implied consent which every person is justly presumed to give to a government so instituted as to secure to all their just rights.

It is a current American idea, that government is founded in the will of the people. This is one of the many loose phrases which have grown out of our popular elections. There is but one Being in the Universe whose will is law. Human will is no standard of right and no basis of authority. The very object, use, and necessity of government, is to restrain and regulate it.

We shall search in vain for any satisfactory philosophy of government which does not recognize the relations of man to his Maker. The Declaration of Independence begins with man as a created being, and asserts the rights with which he is endowed by his Creator. These natural rights imply natural obligations, for no one could enjoy his own rights, if others were not bound to respect them. Government is the enforce

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ment of natural obligations, and in this way the protection of natural rights. The moral restraints of reason, affection, and conscience not being adequate, human government comes in aid of them. Being a necessity, we find arrangements made by the Creator for its institution. We find, in the first place, the family relation, which is clearly established in nature. Mankind are created male and female, and about an equal number of each, with desires which bring them together as man and wife. There is given to them the strongest affections for their offspring, and the family is thus constituted with the husband and father as its natural guardian. In like manner, communities, consisting of a great number of families, have their guardians in nature clearly indicated as the proper persons to make and enforce rules necessary for the common protection and welfare of all. The husband naturally represents the wife; the father, his children; and competent persons, those who are incompetent. As communities grow and expand into nations, many artificial rights and obligations spring into existence, but the great principle remains unchanged.

Superficial readers have sometimes failed to find in the Constitution of the United States a recognition of man's relations to God, and in their haste have called it an atheistic instrument. To say nothing of the oath or solemn appeal to God which it requires of all its officers, executive, legislative, and judicial, let us look at that great opening declaration, in which the ends and principles of our government are set forth. "To form a more perfect union." Harmony and orderheaven's first law. "To establish justice." Justice, that great attribute of the Almighty. "To provide for the general welfare." He careth for all and his tender mercies are over all his works. "To secure the blessings of liberty." Religious liberty or the right to worship God according to conscience. Civil liberty or the enjoyment of the rights which God has given to every human being. These are the pillars of the temple which our fathers built for themselves and their posterity. In the name of these great and immutable principles; in the name of the people of whose rights and obligations these principles are the measure and the guaranty; in the

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