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tocracy is a sham. All their governments and systems are shams. It was reserved for Republicanism to blow away all these things; to disabuse the minds of men of fantastic reverence for shams and shadows. We worship; we are ruled by realities. We condescend to bow to no King Log; nor permit ourselves to be eaten up by no King Stork. All the world, but only we, have been nothing but frogs, fit to be eaten by storks or ruled by logs." What a delightful self-satisfaction. What a sublime egotism. It would be a shame to disturb it. It would be barbarous to scratch the fine skin of such a happy vanity. It reminds us of the quatrain wherewith the people of the land of cakes did, once upon a time, rejoice themselves:

66 Alexander, king of Macedon,

Who conquered all the world except Scotland alone;

And when he came there his courage grew cold,

To find a little people courageous and bold."

But the times are a little out of joint, and we, whose "cursed spite" it is to have to try and set them right, are compelled to ruffle this calm lake of public satisfaction with a pebble or so. We are compelled to ask a home question now and then, just as we are about to do.

Is it a fact then, good people of America, that we worship no shadows, and are governed by no shams? Is it indeed? It would be a very just thing to be proud of if it were so. But let us ask the question in singleness of heart. Let us be candid with ourselves. Pride and vain glory have been the chief causes of the ruin of empires, for they go before a fall. Let us not fall by a like condemnation.

Our political institutions are supposed to be the simplest possible machinery which can be worked for the discharge of the necessary functions of the thing called government. They are created to express the will of the people. Their attributes of sovereignty exist in that idea. When they fail of this, they are out of gear; their proper motive-power is removed, and something else substituted. But nothing else can supply its place with honesty or truth. Therefore, when any other motive-power is substituted, the people are defrauded of their right of eminent domain over all the powers and possessions of government. It is, then, the will of the people, which must be expressed in the acts which affect any of their social, moral, or political interests or relationships; and if any thing different from, or short of, this will of the people be expressed by them,

an usurpation of power has been effected; their sovereignty is abridged, and the fundamental principle of our government removed.

This usurpation may be either direct or indirect, mediate or immediate. It may either be effected upon the State Governments, or the Federal Government, in præsenti; or it may be effected upon them in prospectu. It may be either a condition subsequent, or a condition precedent. The time, mode, or manner of its operation are immaterial to the result. The effect is the same, namely, diminished sovereignty in the people; improper power in the hands of the usurper. Directly it is seldom effected. The checks and balances of the Constitution, and the jealous watchfulness of rival parties, interpose barriers seldom overleaped by the most vaulting ambition. Indirectly, it is constantly achieved through the vitiated machinery of party.

Thus we have now as an organic evil a simulated public opinion. The will of the people and public opinion being convertible terms, the expression of the one is understood to carry with it the power and sovereign rights of the other. To become the exponents of this opinion, and the channels of this power, is the end and aim of every politician. The great and true take the straight and legitimate road. The small and false, the wire-pullers and office-seekers, take the tortuous and illegitimate. The former develop in their actions a real public opinion; the other cover the nakedness of their falsehood, and the arrogations of their unholy ambition, with its counterfeit presentment. These latter choose for the field of their operations the assemblies accredited with the name of Conventions; a name now so long dragged through the mire and filth of corruption and chicane, as to have lost whatever of dignity and influence it originally possessed.

The question will here undoubtedly be asked, Would you abolish conventions of the people? We answer, no. Our object is to replace them in that elevated and useful position once occupied by them. We respect their uses; but that their uses may continue, we would have their abuses reformed.

Look for a moment at the result upon the character of a people when political bodies, assuming to be the voice of a nation, or any respectable fractional part of a nation, betray their express or implied trust.

The two most prominent instances in the history of modern times, of political assemblies, originally constituted according to law, erecting themselves into a power above all law, will at

once suggest themselves. The "Long Parliament" of Great Britain, and the National Convention of France, fulfill all the possible conditions of wrong and usurpation. In what they both issued, every student of history, in fact, every man of ordinary reading, knows. In the latter, the excesses to which this wholesale usurpation gave rise, and the hellish orgies of the "reign of terror," give terrible lessons of its power to dislocate society, and turn the hand of every man against his neighbor. In their inception, both these bodies were legal; and throughout they affected the form of legality. But from the moment they exceeded their delegated powers, they became engines of oppression. Simulating a public opinion which, in nine cases out of ten, had its origin and limit within their own council-chambers, or committee-rooms, they trampled, in the name of the people, upon the people's rights; in the name of justice, destroyed law; and, in the name of virtue, legislated the God who made them out of existence.

It would be useless to pursue the history of those perverted bodies. The native phlegm, and stubborn respect of the English people for constitutional forms preserved the English Convention for the Long Parliament was nothing but a self-constituted convention at the last-from those excesses which disgraced their more volatile and impetuous neighbors. But the great fact stands glaringly out that their tendencies were different in nothing, and their ill effects upon the people varied only in degree. That some things were gained from prescription and arbitrary power by the people is true; but it is equally true that the abuse of the popular machinery of reform was the single reason why reform itself foundered miserably, and only those few broken pieces of the wreck came safe to land. It will be said here that mistakes are inevitable, since all men are fallible; that crude legislation was to be expected from men unused to the business of politics, and suddenly summoned to novel duties and employments from the various avocations of private life. That an astute and wily foe watched their actions, and seized upon every mistake to embarrass and overthrow them. That the popular party had only their patriotism to oppose to the prestige of rank, the power of wealth, and the heritage of command. That learning and ambition, skill and custom, were all against them; and their failure the reaction which followed-and the shipwreck of popular sovereignty, was the melancholy consequence of the combination against them of those three powers of kingcraft, priestcraft, and aristocraft-a triumvirate still hedged about

with too much divinity to succumb to plebeian arms however strong, or plebeian virtue however glorious.

There is a certain amount of truth, and a certain amount of falsehood in the defense. We have not time to examine it here. It is to our own abuses of the machinery of progress and popular government that we have a page or two to devote. And it will be admitted by all that we have no such antagonistic elements; no such watchful foes; no such triumvirate, armed with the mail of prescription, to contend with. Our enemies are those of our own household. We have to guard against ourselves. We are almost individualized, and exposed as it were to the deceitfulness of our own hearts.

Thus we have a republican form of government. All men of all parties agree in lauding that as the best form of human government. All flatter themselves that they are as republican as the best. An assumption of superior republicanism by one, is considered as an insult by the other. All agree that the machinery by which it is carried on is the simplest and best which can be invented by human genius. But as a place in the great national workshop is possible to all, all. desire to blow the bellows or turn the crank; and just as various as the character of human minds, are the modes and methods by which each proposes to oil this journal, or ease that valve, so that the great machine may run more evenly, and better to their individual liking. But the great motive-power, the steam, which drives it all, is public opinion. The potential engineer must, therefore, hit upon some plan to get a footing in the engine-room, before he can begin his work. Once there, unfortunately, the first act of our aspirant is to clap a weight upon the safety-valve and try how many inches of steam the boiler will bear without bursting. Now the ladder which leads to the engine-room is CONVENTIONS-a ladder latterly so broad that pretty much the whole population of the whole Union walk up and down it at their pleasure. A fact from which it naturally results that the engineers in charge of the machine are constantly assisted by an indefinite number of volunteers, whose ignorance is only exceeded by their presumption. Fancy the condition of an ocean-steamer, tossing upon the wide Atlantic, if crew and passengers were, every moment in the day, as the whim seized them, to rush into the engine-room, distract the attention of the engineer, read him crude homilies upon his business, and play mad pranks with his machinery! The condition of the ocean and the weather would be of little consequence to that vessel. Her case would

be as desperate in a calm as in a storm. And yet, with a more delicate machinery; with a vessel the fate of which depends upon a wiser seamanship; with engineers to whose skill and calm ability the safety of a whole nation are committed, such pranks are played in the very frenzy of ignorant pretension. Against what political storm shall that vessel be assured? What profit or what glory can her voyage be crowned with? To leave the figure, plain as it is, and talk to the very thing itself. How can our government, or any government, pursue its course, and discharge its duties with equal justice to all parts of the country, if, at every point, and on every occasion, a convention assembles, not only to declare opinion, but to assume the prerogative of government itself; to teach it its duty, and dictate to it what it shall do, and what it shall leave undone?

When a President is to be nominated, and the individuals preferred by a party are to be recommended to the suffrages of the people of the United States, a convention assembles at a given point. Its members are chosen by their respective constituencies, and instructed as to their wishes. The convention assembles. It nominates. It lays down a platform of principles; and its legitimate work is discharged. If that platform square with the popular sentiment, the people ratify it. The ticket is elected. Its members assume office, and an administration is inagurated upon the terms prescribed by the conven tion. During its term of office, those principles are supposed to guide it. They are the condition precedent of its existence. Dictated by the people, the solemnly-expressed will of the majority, government is bound to conform to them as laws or rules of action. There is no assumption of power. Every State has, by its individual action, through its delegates, consented or directed beforehand, that, for four years, the General Government shall be carried on in accordance with a fixed and accurately-defined political idea. A revolt against this idea, is a revolt of the people against themselves. An attempt by any body less than the whole Union, to prevent the government from developing it in action, is Faction. The power which dictates it originally, is the whole: therefore the whole only can revoke the grant. By the whole we mean the majority— the right of the majority to govern, to carry out their will, being a conceded principle.

What, however, is our modern experience? No sooner is a Democratic administration inagurated, by the will of so vast a majority that unanimity of sentiment may almost be assumed,

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