Every constitution embodies the principles of its framers. It is a transcript of their minds. If its meaning in any place is open to doubt, or if words are used which seem to have no fixed signification, we cannot err in turning to the framers; and their authority increases in proportion to the evidence they have left on the question. By “a republican form of government” our fathers plainly intended a government representing the principles for which they had struggled. Now, if it appears that through years of controversy they insisted on certain principles as vital to free government, even to the extent of encountering the mother country in war,—that afterward, on solemn occasions, they heralded these principles to the world as “self-evident truths,”—that also, in declared opinions, they sustained these principles,—and that in public acts they embodied these principles,—then is it beyond dispute that these principles must have entered into the idea of the government they took pains to place under the guaranty of the nation. But all these things can be shown unanswerably.
In these words of hypothesis I foreshadow the four different heads under which these principles may be seen.
First, as asserted by the Fathers throughout the long radical controversy which culminated in war.
Secondly, as announced in solemn declarations.
Thirdly, as sustained in declared opinions.
Fourthly, as embodied in public acts.
1. I begin with the principles asserted by our fathers throughout the protracted controversy that preceded the Revolution. If Senators ask why our fathers struggled so long in controversy with the mother country, and then went forth to battle, they will find that it was to establish the very principles for which I now contend. To secure the natural rights of men, and especially to vindicate the controlling maxim that there can be no taxation without representation, they fought with argument and then with arms. Had these been conceded, there would have been no Lexington or Bunker Hill, and the Colonies would have continued yet longer under transatlantic rule. The first object was not independence, but the establishment of these principles; and when at last independence began, it was because these principles could be secured in no other way. Therefore the triumph of independence was the triumph of these principles, which necessarily entered into and became the animating soul of the Republic then and there born. The evidence is complete, and, if I dwell on it with minuteness, it is because of its decisive character.
The great controversy opened with the pretension of Parliament to tax the Colonies, first disclosed to Benjamin Franklin as early as 1754. It was at the time a profound secret; but the patriot philosopher, whose rare intelligence embraced the natural laws of government not less than those of science, in a few masterly sentences exposed the injustice of taxation without representation.[85] For a moment the Ministry shrank back; but at last, when the power of France had been humbled, and the Colonies were no longer needed as allies in war, George Grenville, blind to principle and only seeing an increase of revenue, renewed the irrational claim. The Colonies were to be taxed by the Parliament in which they had no representation. Two millions and a half of people—for such was the population then—were to pay taxes without voice in determining them. The men of that day listened to the tidings with dismay. In this ministerial outrage they saw the overthrow of their liberties, whether founded on natural rights or on the rights of British subjects. In their conclusions they were confirmed by two names of authority in British history, Algernon Sidney and John Locke, each of whom solemnly asserted the liberties now in danger. One had borne his testimony on the scaffold, the other in exile.
Sidney, in his Discourses on Government, did not hesitate to say, that “God leaves to man the choice of forms in government,”—and then again, that “all just magistratical power is from the people.”[86] Such words were calculated to strengthen the sentiment of human freedom. But it was Locke who gave formal expression to the very principles now assailed. In a famous passage of his work on Civil Government, inspired and tempered by his exile in Holland, this eminent Englishman bore his testimony.