men will be loosed from all restraint, released from all obligation, and there will be for them neither right nor wrong. Nobody can admit that right and wrong owe their existence to the aristocracy. Moreover, the aristocracy are men, and as men, they are in the same predicament with all other men. They are themselves under law, accountable, and therefore not sovereign in their own right. If we say they are above the people, they are placed there by some power which is also above them, and that, not they, is the sovereign.

But if neither people, nor kings, nor aristocracy are sovereign, who or what is? What is the answer which every man, when he reflects as a moralist, gives to the question, Why ought I to do this or that particular thing? Does he say because the king commands it? the aristocracy enjoin it? the people ordain it? the majority wills it? No. He says, if he be true to his higher convictions, because it is right, because it is just. Every man feels that he has a right to do whatever is just, and that it is his duty to do it. Whatever he feels to be just, he feels to be legitimate, to be law, to be morally obligatory. Whatever is unjust, he feels to be illegitimate, to be without obligation, and to be that which it is not disloyalty to resist. The absolutist, he who contends for unqualified submission on the part of the people to the monarch, thunders, therefore, in the ears of the absolute monarch himself, that he is bound to be just; and the aristocrat assures his order that its highest nobility is derived from its obedience to justice; and does not the democrat too, even while he proclaims the sovereignty of the people, tell this same sovereign people to be just? In all this, witness is borne to an authority above the individual, above kings, nobilities, and people, and to the fact too, that the absolute sovereign is justice. Justice is then the sovereign, the sovereign of sovereigns, the king of kings, lord of lords, the supreme law of the people, and of the individual.

This doctrine teaches that the people, as a state,

are as much bound to be just, as is the individual. By bounding the state by justice, we declare it limited; we deny its absolute sovereignty; and, therefore, save the individual from absolute slavery. The individual may on this ground arrest the action of the state, by alleging that it is proceeding unjustly; and the minority has a moral force with which to oppose the physical force of the majority. By this there is laid in the state the foundation of liberty; liberty is acknowledged as a right, whether it be possessed as a fact or not.

A more formal refutation of the sovereignty of the people, or vindication of the sovereignty of justice is not needed. In point of fact, there are none who mean to set up the sovereignty of the people above the sovereignty of justice. All, we believe, when the question is presented, as we have presented it, will and do admit that justice is supreme, though very few seem to have been aware of the consequences which result from such an admission. The sovereignty of justice, in all cases whatsoever, is what we understand by the doctrine of democracy. True democracy is not merely the denial of the absolute sovereignty of the king, and that of the nobility, and the assertion of that of the people; but it is properly the denial of the absolute sovereignty of the state, whatever the form of government adopted as the agent of the state, and the assertion of the absolute sovereignty of justice. Still, we are not insensible to the fact, that the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people marks an immense progress in political science, and in the sense in which they, who assert it, mean to assert it, it is no doubt true.

Sovereignty may be taken either absolutely or relatively. When taken abosolutely, as we have thus far taken it, and as it ought always to be taken, especially in a free government, it means, as we have defined it, the highest, that which is ultimate, which has the right to command what it will, and which to resist is crime. Thus defined it is certain, that neither people, nor

kings, nor aristocracies are sovereign, for they are all under law, and accountable to an authority which is not theirs, but which is above them, and independent on them.

When taken relatively, as it usually is by writers on government, it means the state, or the highest civil or political power of the state. The state, we have seen, is not absolute. It is not an independent sovereign. It is not, then, in strictness, a sovereign at all. Its enactments are not in and of themselves laws, and cannot be laws, unless they receive the signature of absolute justice. If that signature be withheld they are null and void from the beginning. Nevertheless social order, which is the indispensable condition of the very existence of the community, demands the creation of a government, and that the government should be clothed with the authority necessary for the maintenance of order. That portion of sovereignty necessary for this end, and, if you please, for the promotion of the common weal, justice delegates to the state. This portion of delegated sovereignty is what is commonly meant by sovereignty. This sovereignty is necessarily limited to certain specific objects, and can be no greater than is needed for those objects. If the state stretch its authority beyond those objects, it becomes a usurper, and the individual is not bound to obey, but may lawfully resist it, as he may lawfully resist any species of injustice, taking care, however, that the manner of his resistance be neither unjust in itself, nor inconsistent with social order. For instance, the state assumes the authority to allow a man to be seized and held as property; the man may undoubtedly assert his liberty, his rights as a man, and endeavor to regain them; but he may not, in doing this, deny or infringe any of the just rights of him who may have deemed himself his master or owner. The Israelites had a right to free themselves from their bondage to the Egyptians, but they had not the right to rob the Egyptians of their jewelry.

Now this qualified, limited sovereignty, which in the last analysis, as we have said, is no sovereignty at all, is the sovereignty which has been asserted for the people, and to this sovereignty they are undoubtedly entitled. This sovereignty, which is the sovereignty of the state, may be vested in one man, and then the government is a monarchy; it may be vested in a few, and then the government is an aristocracy, or an oligarchy; it may be vested in the priesthood, and then the government is a hierarchy, or a theocracy, as it is more frequently called, because the priesthood never claim the sovereignty in their own name, but in the name of God, the priestly name for justice, the absolute sovereign; or, in fine, it may be vested in the people, and then it is a democracy, and a democracy, although the exercise of authority be in fact assigned to one man, or to a few nobles, if the one man, or the few nobles are held to derive their authority to govern from the people. France, in theory, was a democracy under Napoleon, although the exercise of authority was delegated to one man, and made hereditary in his family.

If the question come up, which of these various forms of government is the best, we answer unhesitatingly, that which vests sovereignty in the people. One thing may be affirmed of all forms of government. Wherever the supreme power of the state is lodged, they who are its depositaries always seek to wield it to their own exclusive benefit. Government is, whatever its form, invariably administered for the good of the governors. Theorists, indeed, tell us that government is instituted for the good of the governed; but that they are wrong is proved by the experience of six thousand years. Some have thought that governments were made for the good of the people; they who think the people were made for the good of governments, think more conformably to fact. They who have the power invariably seek to derive the greatest profit possible from it for themselves. Thus, in a monarchy, all things must be held subordi

nate and subservient to the interests and glory of the monarch; in a theocracy, all succumbs to the priesthood; in an aristocracy, the few must ride, though the many trudge on foot; in a democracy, the many are cared for, though the few be neglected. Without claiming any peculiar merit for the governing class in a democracy, we say, therefore, that a democracy is the best form of government for Humanity, as much better as it is that the many shall be well off, though the few suffer, than it is that the few should be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day, while the many lie at their gates, covered over with the rags and bruises of poverty and abuse, begging to be fed with the few crumbs which may chance to fall from their tables. So far, then, as sovereignty is to be affirmed of the state, we say let it be affirmed of the people. If we be told that the people are incapable of using it to their own good, we say, let them use it to their own hurt then. They will have a hard time of it, even with a good share of infernal aid to boot, to govern themselves worse than kings, nobilities, and hierarchies have hitherto governed them.

We suppose all that any body really means by the sovereignty of the people is, that the highest civil or political power in the state is the people; and that all officers of the government, whether bearing royal, patrician, or plebeian titles, are to be regarded, not as the governors or rulers of the people, but as the simple agents of the people, to whom they are directly accountable for their official conduct. This we hold to be a truth; and the fault we find with them who assert the sovereignty of the people is, not with the doctrine they seem to themselves to be setting forth, but with their neglect of the obvious limitations of that sovereignty. The advocates of popular sovereignty have taken good care to limit the authority, to circumscribe and define the powers of the government, so as to keep it in due subordination to the people, from whom it derives its existence; but they