may devise. To establish government, and to alter its form or character, so as to meet the varying wants of society, are among the inherent rights of every people. These are very generally conceded as fundamental principles in political science. They are denied by those who contend for the divine right of kings, and who hold that the many were created for the few; but the ablest writers acknowledge these rights as belonging primarily to the people, and of which they cannot be justly divested.
In regard to changing the government which exists over a people, either in its form or in matters of substance, the modes are various. In a monarchy, a people may wish to go no farther than to demand and receive concessions from the sovereign, leaving the form and structure of the government intact. Under a despotism, tyranny may become so oppressive as to be unendurable, with no hope of relief from the ruling power. Then, revolution may become a duty. This remedy is deemed justifiable in extreme cases, and a right which a people can never surrender. The propriety of resorting to it must, for the most part, be determined by the circumstances of each case.
In a popular government, however, republican or democratical, whose form and structure have sprung from the free consent of the whole people, and where the rulers, from the highest to the lowest, are chosen and frequently changed by their common suffrages, the right of violent revolution would seem to be well-nigh or quite excluded. All abuses of power are subject to that peaceful remedy · which the people always have in their hands. Any branch of the government, executive, legislative, or judicial, which usurps authority, may be speedily reached and the corrective applied, as, for example, in the United States,-by impeachment, or by the ballot. If the remedy belong directly to the people, the determination is with the major