"It is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law to do your business by the voice of the people. And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you, yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land. * * * * And I command you to do these things in the fear of the Lord; and I command you to do these things, and that ye have no king; that if this people commit sins and iniquities, they shall be answered upon their own heads. For behold, I say unto you, the sins of many people have been caused by the iniquities of their kings; therefore their iniquities are answered upon the heads of their kings. And now I desire that this inequality should be no more in this land, especially among this my people; but I desire that this be a land of liberty, that every man may enjoy his rights and privileges alike, so long as the Lord sees fit that we may live and inherit the land; yea, even as long as any of our posterity remains upon the face of the land."
The old king in his passage points to the existence of an important element in government by the people, the moral element; the direct, personal responsibility of the individual for such evils as obtain under government where the people rule. But in order that this element of moral responsibility may be brought into government, it stands to reason that every individual must be free and untrammeled in the exercise of his political duties, in the casting of his vote. Each individual musts have an equal voice in the government. Every man must be a sovereign in the civil institution, and his vote must represent the voice and judgment of a free man. A vote unawed by influence, and uncoerced by any power whatsoever. Less than this would bring the whole scheme of government by the voice of the people into contempt and failure. Under the system of government by the people, in order to retain the moral responsibility of the people in civil affairs, there must be no appeal but to the intelligent judgment of the individual. Each man's act must be the act of a free man; and those who would corrupt the electorate of a government where the people rule, or sway it by any other force than by an appeal to reason, would destroy this element of personal, moral responsibility in civil government, and in the case of those of us who accept this book from which I am quoting—if we would appeal to any other force than to that of reason, we would be setting ourselves against an order of things that God has ordained.
This old king of whom I am speaking manifested wisdom in another respect. His suggestion of this change from a monarchy to a republic carried with it the provision that the change should not go into effect until the time of his death. He would remain king so long as he lived; then the rule by the voice of the people should begin. Was the old monarch conscious that it would be difficult to inaugurate this rule of the people while he yet lived? That there would be those who would seek to know his desires, then proclaim them, influence the minds of the electorate, and thus still have Mosiah's rule instead of government by the people? I do not know how far these thoughts may have been the thoughts of the king; but surely he removed grave difficulties from the institution of his newly conceived form of government for his people by putting off its inauguration until after his death. For sure it is that the desires of one so esteemed, so wise and unselfish, would have had such influence that his wishes, howsoever expressed, would have been followed by the people, and in a measure the end of his proposed revolution would have been thwarted.
These reflections bring to my recollection the words of an American writer (Orville Dewey) whose works I learned to esteem in the early days of my reading. Especially did I admire the following passage on what the character of a free people should be, from his essay on "Human Life:"
"Liberty gentlemen, is a solemn thing—a welcome, a joyous, a glorious thing, if you please; but it is a solemn thing. A free people must be a thoughtful people. The subjects of a despot may be reckless and gay if they can. A free people must be serious; for it has to do the greatest things that ever was done in the world—to govern itself. That hour in human life is most serious when it passes from parental control into free manhood; then must the man bind the righteous law upon himself, more strongly than father or mother ever bound it upon him. And when a people leaves the leading-strings of prescriptive authority, and enters upon the ground of freedom, that ground must be fenced with law; it must be tilled with wisdom; it must be hallowed with prayer. The tribunal of justice, the free school, the holy church must be built there, to entrench, to defend and to keep the sacred heritage. * * * In the universe there is no trust so awful as moral freedom; and all good civil freedom depends upon the use of that. But look at it. Around every human, every rational being, is drawn a circle; the space within is cleared from obstruction, or, at least, from all coercion; it is sacred to the being himself who stands there; it is secured and consecrated to his own responsibility. May I say it?—God himself does not penetrate there with any absolute, any coercive power! He compels the winds and waves to obey him; he compels animal instincts to obey him; but he does not compel men to obey. That sphere he leaves free; he brings influences to bear upon it; but the last, final, solemn, infinite question between right and wrong, he leaves to man himself. Ah! instead of madly delighting in his freedom, I could imagine a man to protest, to complain, to tremble that such a tremendous prerogative is accorded to him. But it is accorded to him, and nothing but willing obedience can discharge that solemn trust; nothing but a heroism greater than that which fights battles, and pours out its blood on its country's altar—the heroism of self-renunciation and self-control. Come that liberty! I invoke it with all the ardor of the poets and orators of freedom; with Spenser and Milton, with Hampden and Sydney, with Rienzi and Dante, with Hamilton and Washington, I invoke it. Come that liberty! Come none that does not lead to that! Come the liberty that shall strike off every chain, not only of iron, and iron-law, but of painful constriction, of fear, of enslaving passion, of mad self-will; the liberty of perfect truth and love, of holy faith and glad obedience!"
I trust this consideration of some of the details that enter into the idea that our constitution is a divinely inspired instrument, will bring home to us more emphatically the seriousness of that declaration, as also that it will bring to us the realization of our responsibilities that we sustain as free men, as sovereigns in a free government. I trust, however, that you will not think I am calling attention to these matters because I believe there will be any failure on the part of the people of our great republic to perpetuate these institutions so vital to our system of government. I cannot believe that our nation was brought into existence under the circumstances that attended upon its birth to end at last in failure. On the contrary, I am persuaded that the time has fully come for the establishment in this world, in some permanent way, government by the people. That the reign of tyrants is ended and that the rule of the people has begun, and will remain. The people of our country, especially the people of our state, I trust, and believe, will stand for the great principles that will perpetuate free institutions; that there shall be in our country "equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;" that our nation shall continue as an indissoluble union of indestructible states; that "the state governments shall be supported in all their rights as the most competent administration for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwark against anti-republican tendencies;" that the general government "shall be preserved in its whole constitutional vigor as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;" that a "jealous care shall be exercised of the right of election by the people"—unawed by influence, uncoerced by any power other than an appeal to reason; that "absolute acquiescence shall be maintained in the decision of the majority, the vital principle of republics;" also "the supremacy of the civil over military authority;" the "diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the board of public reason; freedom of the press and freedom of person"[1]—all these shall be maintained, and with these principles maintained we may be assured that free government will not perish from among men.
[Footnote 1: The reader will, of course, recognize these quoted members of the concluding sentence as excerpts from Jefferson's First Inaugural Address.]