people's voice becomes that of a king, the whole composing the body; for they are supreme, not as individuals, but in their collective capacity. Homer also says, "Ill fares it where the multitude hath sway." Now, when the people possess this power, they desire to be altogether absolute; and such a people become analogous to tyranny among the forms of monarchy, for their manners are the same, and they both hold despotic power over better persons than themselves. For their decrees are like the others' adicts, and a demagogue with them (the people) is like a flatterer among the others; bu both these two classes abound with each, flatterers with tyrants and demagogues with such a people. And to them (the demagogues) it is owing that the supreme power is lodged with the people, and not in written laws, for they bring everything before them. . . . . Any one, therefore, may, with great justice, blame such a government by calling it a democracy, and not a free State; for where the government is not vested in the laws, then there is no free State, for the law ought to be supreme over all things.' Ay, we repeat, for he who bids the law to be supreme, makes God supreme; but who entrusts man with the supreme power, gives it to a wild beast.' Such is the judgment of Aristotle, the greatest and most practical of all political thinkers, who, after he had carefully studied and written the history of 158 republics, sat down to compose his Politics. Equally emphatic is the language of Bishop Thirwall. 'The principle of legal equality,' says he his History of Greece, which is the basis of democracy, was gradually constructed in a manner which inverted the wholesome order of nature, and led to a long train of pernicious consequences. The administration of the commonwealth came to be regarded, not as a service in which all were interested, but for which some might be qualified better than others, but as a property, in which each was entitled to an equal share. In proportion as the assembly, or large portions detached from it for the exercise of judicial functions, drew all the branches of the sovereignty more and more into their sphere, the character 1 Book IV, Chap. II. of their proceedings became more and more subject to the influence of the lower class of the citizens, which constituted a permanent majority. And thus the democracy, instead of the equality which was its supposed basis, in fact, established the ascendancy of a faction, which, although greatly preponderant in numbers, no more represented the whole State than the oligarchy itself; and which, though not equally liable to fall into the mechanism of a vicious system, was more prone to yield to the impulse of the moment, more easily misled by blind or treacherous guides, and might thus, as frequently, though not so deliberately and methodically, temple, not only on law and custom, but on justice and humanity. This disease of a democracy was sometimes designated by the term ochlocracy, or the dominion of the rabble. The career of the Athenian demos repeated itself in Rome. It was only after the lapse of ages, and through many conflicts and struggles, that the people of Rome acquired the share of power in their own government to which they were justly entitled. But power never respects the limitations imposed by reason or justice, or the conditions of civil liberty. Like the daughters of the horseleech, it never cries enough, but always, give! give! This desire was gratified, and the fate of the Republic sealed by the Lex Hortensia. • . . . Neibuhr says of the Hortensian law: It establishes a true democracy, inasmuch as it lays down the rule that in legisla tive measures the Plebes could pass any decree; at the same time, the ver of the curies was taken away. This is a decided victory of the democracy.'1 A decided victory for the democracy, but a fatal blow to the Republic. For, from the time this decree was enacted, 'there was but one dictator, Hortensius, down to the time of Cicero, and likewise only one Hortensian law. This resolution was an extraordinary event' (forever memorable in the annals of Rome), for it was the first step toward the fall and breaking up of the Roman State. Yet the condition of Rome was so sound that a hundred and fifty years passed away before the mischief displayed itself."" 1 Lectures on Roman History, Vol. I, p. 322. The many, once possessed of the supreme power, never manifested, their collective action, the higher and nobler instincts of hamanity, but the lust of dominion, the greed of gain, and the love of flattery, seemed to possess them wholly. Then it happened at Rome, as it had always happened before, and as it has always since happened, the majority pursued its own sovereign will alone, regarding the rights of neither gods nor men. The body politic, in short, was developed, or rather transformed, into the wild beast' of Aristotle. De Tocqueville, in spite of all his fine democratic theories, beheld and deplored the existence of the monsterthe same in all ages!ampant and raging in this country as early as 1832. The majority, invested with the supreme power, was even then, in the language of the great Frenchman, a cruel and remorseless tyrant, that 'heeded not the outcries and complaints of those whom it crushed upon its path.' No falser word was ever uttered, no more fatal heresy was ever commended to 'the young thought and hope' of any land than the declaration of the immortal Jefferson,' that absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority' is 'the vital principle of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force.' If the young men of this country shall, by any means whatever, be induced to worship the wild beast of Aristotle, or the god of Thomas Jefferson, then are we far, very far, from the end of our present darkness and troubles. Instead of deliverance and light, then shall we, indeed, see below the lowest depth' a 'lower deep still threateninto devour' us. May God, in his infinite mercy, save this country, this great continent, from the incalculable curses and calamities of all such horrible heresies. We must, however, say one word in justice to the memory of Mr. Jefferson. He had just been elevated to the Presidency of the United States, the high goal of his ambition, and the sweet resting place of all his loftiest aspirations. How ungracious in him, then-nay, how very ungrateful-if, under such circumstances, he had barely hinted at any of the teachings of history, or philosophy, respecting the nature of the huge animal by which he had just been so highly exalted He was evidently, in fact, more disposed to look at that animal as the most beautiful of all living creatures, than as the most terrible of all monsters. It was in this very amiable and loving mood that he returned the compliments of the majority, by declaring that 'absolute acquiescence' in its wi✈ is 'the vital principle of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force.' W should not judge him too harshly, then, if, on so interesting and so sublime an occasion, he failed to allude to any of those checks of the Constitution, which had been expressly ordained as restraints on the will of the majority. . But even if we could wholly condones very amiable weakness of Mr. Jefferson, we cannot forget that his first Inaugural' indulges neither in the language nor in the spirit of the Constitution of 1787. Dr. Palmer notices, indeed, this very grave omission in Mr. Jefferson's analysis of the Constitution. It omits to name,' says he, 'the indispensable necessity of some adequate provision for protecting the rights of minorities.' But he apologizes for this omission, by asserting that the history of that day had not so clearly demonstrated,' as subsequent history has done, the necessity of some such provision. This seems to be a mistake on the part of Dr. Palmer himself. The history of that daynay, the history of all time had as clearly as possible demonstrated the absolute and indispensable necessity of precisely such a provision. Mr. Jefferson may have been ignorant, if Dr. Palmer pleases, of that overwhelming demonstration of all history - there are certainly no signs of any such knowledge in his Inaugural; but it would be gross injustice to our ancestral faiths,' to the American creed' of 1787, to suppose that it is fairly reflected in that production of Mr. Jefferson's pen, or in any other portion of his writings. It was one of the prime articles of those faiths, of that creed, that there can be no freedom, no peace, no rest, no happiness for minorities in a republic, unless its provisions afforded ample protection for their rights against the well-known tyranny of majorities. The only question was as to what provision would be adequate to such a purpose. On this point there was, in fact, no little diversity of opinion. The majority of the Convention of 1787 believed, of course, that the provisions enacted by them would be adequate to the protection of such rights. But there was one man, at least, in that Convention who believed that all these provisions would prove too feeble to resist the amazing violence of the democratic spirit,' and who, accordingly, predicted that time would demonstrate the Constitution of 1787 to be a frail and worthless fabric.' That one man was Alexander Hamilton. Dr. Palmer, looking at our ancestral faiths 'through the medium of Mr. Jefferson's Inaugural, supposes that if we should return to those faiths, and try the grand experiment over again, we should possess some important information which history, at that day, had not so clearly demonstrated as it has since done. We should know, forsooth, far better than the legislators of 177, the indispensable necessity of some adequate provision for protecting the rights of minorities' against the tyranny of majorities! If any one political principle, in fact, was more clearly known to those legislators than any other, it was this 'indispensable necessity' of protecting the rights of minorities. History, it is true, has since re-demonstrated this principle, but history did not begin in the year 1787. Indeed, all preceding history, and our own preceding history in particular, had so clearly demonstrated this principle, that it was perfectly understood by the framers of the Constitution of 1787. No one who has read the pages of this Review could possibly entertain the shadow of a doubt respecting the truth of this assertion. If, indeed, any one had only read the two following pages of the Southern Review, for April, 1867, he could not have fallen into, or sanctioned, the error under consideration.. 'There was not a man in the Convention of 1787,' say the pages referred to, which assembled in Philadelphia to frame the Constitution of the United States, who did not assume the tyranny of the majority as a first principle or postulate. Thus, said the ablest member of that Convention, "Give all power to the many, and they will oppress the few; give all power to the few, and they will oppress the many." Nor was there a single delegate to that Convention, nor a single leading statesman in America, who, at that time, |