Government;" claimed absolute supremacy and regal prerogatives; dissolved states and made new ones; changed the state governments; removed the highest officers thereof; gave, and took away, voting power; and, in short, did many revolutionary enormities "outside of the constitution." These things, which every officer of the government was sworn not to do, were really treasonable to the last degree, for they destroyed the existence of the states, and dethroned the sovereignty of the people who were the states, and who politically existed, and politically acted, only as states. Suffrage is humanly speaking "the pearl of great price" in republican freedom. It is vital to liberty, and must be absolutely controlled by the people who own it, and not by any government. The voting power belongs, of original and absolute right, to the community called the state, who are the real gov- what we call "government" being the agency thereof; and a republic being a government of the people by the people. Says MONTESQUIEU (I. Esprit des Lois, p. 12): "In a democracy, there can be no exercise of sovereignty but by the suffrages of the people, which are their will. Now, the sovereign's will is the sovereign himself; the laws, therefore, which establish the right of suffrage, are fundamental to this government. In fact, it is as important to regulate, in a republic, in what manner, by whom, and concerning what, suffrages are to be given, as it is in a monarchy to know who is the prince, and after what manner he is to govern." ernment The original voting power is the people composing the society or state, in whom, as every state constitution declares or implies, "all political power is inherent." The derivative or delegative voting power is an endowment, by society or the state, of individual members designated and described as voters, in the constitution of the state. As Montesquieu says, "the laws which establish the right of suffrage are fundamental to the government," and hence they are found only in the fundamental laws of the states, established, of original right, by sovereign power. It is plain, then, that if the government (whether state or federal) controls or disposes of suffrage, without warrant in the constitution, it strikes at the very vitals of the republic, from which it derives its entire existence and power, and commits perjured usurpation, as well as flagrant treason. It is equally plain that an insidious and fraudulent revolution is now going on, tending to subjugate the people of this country just as all other free peoples have been to the "absolute supremacy of the government! - Would to God that I could sear upon the brain and heart of each of our states and citizens, the words of that immortal statesman, that best English friend of American liberty, EDMUND BURKE! "This change,” said he, "from an immediate state of procuration and delegation, to a course of acting as from original power, is the way in which all the popular magistracies of the world have been perverted from their purposes." Oh that our people may heed the warning, and stay the hand of Fate, which is even now engraving upon the walls of time, that "Our own, Like free states foregone, is but a bright leaf torn And sink at last forever!" it, 66 CHAPTER II. PERVERSION. S "the government" now claims "absolute supremacy," and exercises and enforces the same, whenever it thinks" necessity,' ""the safety of the republic," or even "good policy" requires 'we, the people," have obviously lost our freedom. And we can' only retake and enjoy it, in its active sense of self-government, by reasserting and re-establishing the original federal plan, and henceforth keeping our general government within our "supreme law" establishing it, and compelling the said government to work, as our agency, under our sovereignty, with the legal force originally contemplated—the same that the state governments work with- and that needs no military force, except to aid the civil authority, and put down any banded criminal opposition thereto. The states being the sole sources of all power, federal military force against any of the people, without, or against, state authority, is treasonable. To impress upon the reader, at this point, the absolute sovereignty of the people, and the subordination of their governments, as well as the perfect similarity, in created existence, character, and vicarious authority, of the federal and state governments; and, moreover, to get an absolute and unquestionable basis for further exposition, let us have the sacred testimony of the fathers, as to the seat or residence of original, absolute, and uncontrollable authority, i. e. sovereignty. It is well to observe here, that every state constitution or bill of rights expressed or implied that "ALL POLITICAL POWER IS INHERENT IN THE PEOPLE," so that the fathers did not, in the following extracts, express their opinions merely, but truths the very institutes of freedom. The Doctrine of the Fathers.-Said HAMILTON in the convention of New York, in 1788, speaking of the proposed system: "What is the structure of this government? . . . The people govern. They act by their immediate representatives." He evidently knew of no "absolute supremacy" in "the government." JOHN JAY, of New York, the first Chief Justice of the United States, wrote as follows, in his "address to the people" of that state, in favor of the federal constitution: "The proposed government is to be the government of the people. All its officers are to be their officers, and to exercise no rights but such as the people commit to them. The constitution only serves to point out that part of the people's business, which they think proper by it to refer to the management of the persons therein designated." Does not that mean the constitution of an agency? JUDGE PARSONS, one of the greatest statesmen and jurists of Massachusetts, in the ratifying convention of that state, characterized the federal government as "a government to be administered for the common good, by the servants of the people, vested with delegated powers, by popular election, at stated periods." "The federal constitution," continued he, "establishes a government of this description, and, in this case, the people divest themselves of nothing; the government and powers which the congress can administer, are the mere result of a compact made by the people." "The people divest themselves of nothing," said Judge Parsons; that is to say, they govern themselves, using an agency for that purpose Qui facit per alium, facit per se. But our modern interpreters say that "the government" has "absolute supremacy," and can enforce "the allegiance" of the very states that gave it existence. Said Gen. C. C. PINCKNEY, of South Carolina, in the ratifying convention of that state: "The sovereign or supreme power of the state, with us, resides in the people." "The general government has no powers but what are expressly granted to it." "By delegating express powers, we certainly reserve to ourselves every power and right not mentioned in the constitution." Said CHANCEL LOR PENDLETON, the president of the ratifying convention of Virginia : "The people are the fountain of all power. They must, however, delegate it to agents, because from their number, etc., . . they cannot exercise it in person. . . . When we were forming our state constitution, we were confined to local circumstances. In forming a government for the union, we must consider our situation as connected with our neighboring states." Said JOHN MARSHALL, afterwards the great judge, in the same convention: "Those who give, may take away. It is the people that give power, and can take it back; what shall restrain them? They are the masters who gave it, and of whom the servants hold it. . . . Are not Congress and the state legislatures the agents of the people?" Said CHANCELLOR LIVINGSTON, in the ratifying convention of New York: "They, the people, acknowledge the same great principle of government, . . . that all power is derived from the people. They consider the state and general governments as different deposits of that power. In this view, it is of little moment to them, whether that portion of it which ... they must, for their own happiness, lodge in their rulers, be invested in the state governments only, or shared between them and the councils of the union. The rights they reserve are not diminished, and probably their liberty acquires additional security from the division." Said JAMES WILSON, who was the leading statesman of Pennsylvania in both the federal and state conventions: "The supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power is in the people before they make a constitution, and remains in them after it is made." "The absolute sovereignty never goes from the people." The FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY wrote to his nephew, Bushrod Washington, Nov. 10, 1787, as follows: "The power, under the constitution, will always be in the people. It is entrusted to their representatives, . . . their servants. . . They are no more than the creatures of the people." Said MADISON (who is often called the "Father of the Constitution," and who certainly was "its ablest expounder "), in Article 46 of the Federalist: "The federal and state governments are, in fact, but different AGENTS AND TRUSTEES of the people, instituted with different powers. . .' The ultimate authority [i. e. the “absolute supremacy"] wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone." And he said, in the convention of Virginia, in reference to the parties to the union, that the phrase "the people" did not mean "the people as composing one great society, but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties." And it may be stated here that generally, when the fathers used the phrase "the people," constitutionally, they meant the people of the sovereign states, that were the actors in making the federative union. They could not have meant otherwise, for the simple reason that the people were the states, and the states were the people. In his speech of 1833, DANIEL WEBSTER, the head of the Massachusetts school, decisively admits the above, and destroys the basis of himself and school as follows: "The sovereignty of government is an idea belonging to the other side of the Atlantic. No such thing is known in North America: . . . with us all power is with the people. They alone are sovereign; and they erect what governments they please, and confer on them such power as they please. None of these governments is sovereign." No framer of the constitution ever did, or could, characterize the federal functionaries they were providing for, otherwise than as the states themselves did, as substitutes and agents," who were to be and remain as citizens" and "subjects" of the states, being elected by these to execute their will. They considered "the people" to be absolutely sovereign; the states to be "the people;" all governments to be created, derivative, and vicarious; and all of such agencies to be endowed only with trusts of power, and to possess, by virtue of imparted authority alone, a coercive jurisdic |