This being so, then follow two other great principles of the American system.
1. The first is, that the right of suffrage shall be guarded, protected, and secured against force and against fraud; and,
2. The second is, that its exercise shall be prescribed by previous law; its qualifications shall be prescribed by previous law; the time and place of its exercise shall be prescribed by previous law; the manner of its exercise, under whose supervision (always sworn officers of the law), is to be prescribed. And then, again, the results are to be certified to the central power by some certain rule, by some known public officers, in some clear and definite form, to the end that two things may be done: first, that every man entitled to vote may vote; second, that his vote may be sent forward and counted, and so he may exercise his part of sovereignty, in common with his fellow-citizens.
In the exercise of political power through representatives we know nothing, we never have known any thing, but such an exercise as should take place through the prescribed forms of law. When we depart from that, we shall wander as widely from the American track as the pole is from the track of the sun.
I have said that it is one principle of the American system, that the people limit their governments, National and State. They do so; but it is another principle, equally true and certain, and, according to my judgment of things, equally important, that the people often limit themselves. They set bounds to their own power. They have chosen to secure the institutions which they establish against the sudden impulses of mere majorities. All our institutions teem with instances of this. It was their great conservative principle, in constituting forms of government, that they should secure what they had established against hasty changes by simple majorities. By the fifth article of the Constitution of the United States, Congress, two thirds of both houses concurring, may propose amendments of the Constitution; or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the States, may call a convention; and amendments proposed in either of these forms must be ratified by the legislatures or conventions of three fourths of the States. The fifth article of the Constitution, if it was made a topic for those who framed the "people's constitution" of Rhode Island, could only have been a matter of reproach. It gives no countenance to any of their proceedings, or to any thing like them. On the contrary, it is one remarkable instance of the enactment and application of that great American principle, that the constitution of government should be cautiously and prudently interfered with, and that changes should not ordinarily be begun and carried through by bare majorities.
But the people limit themselves also in other ways. They limit themselves in the first exercise of their political rights. They limit themselves, by all their constitutions, in two important respects; that is to say, in regard to the qualifications of electors, and in regard to the qualifications of the elected. In every State, and in all the States, the people have precluded themselves from voting for everybody they might wish to vote for; they have limited their own right of choosing. They have said, We will elect no man who has not such and such qualifications. We will not vote ourselves, unless we have such and such qualifications. They have also limited themselves to certain prescribed forms for the conduct of elections. They must vote at a particular place, at a particular time, and under particular conditions, or not at all. It is in these modes that we are to ascertain the will of the American people; and our Constitution and laws know no other mode. We are not to take the will of the people from public meetings, nor from tumultuous assemblies, by which the timid are terrified, the prudent are alarmed, and by which society is disturbed. These are not American modes of signifying the will of the people, and they never were. If any thing in the country, not ascertained by a regular vote, by regular returns, and by regular representation, has been established, it is an exception, and not the rule; it is an anomaly which, I believe, can scarcely be found.
It is true that at the Revolution, when all government was immediately dissolved, the people got together, and what did they do? Did they exercise sovereign power? They began an inceptive organization, the object of which was to bring together representatives of the people, who should form a government. This was the mode of proceeding in those States where their legislatures were dissolved. It was much like that had in England upon the abdication of James the Second. He ran away, he abdicated. He threw the great seal into the Thames. I am not aware that, on the 4th of May, 1842, any great seal was thrown into Providence River! But James abdicated, and King William took the government; and how did he proceed? Why, he at once requested all who had been members of the old Parliament, of any regular Parliament in the time of Charles the Second, to assemble. The Peers, being a standing body, could of course assemble; and all they did was to recommend the calling of a convention, to be chosen by the same electors, and composed of the same numbers, as composed a Parliament. The convention assembled, and, as all know, was turned into a Parliament. This was a case of necessity, a revolution. Don't we call it so? And why? Not merely because a new sovereign then ascended the throne of the Stuarts, but because there was a change in the organization of the government. The legal and established succession was broken. The convention did not assemble under any preceding law. There was a hiatus, a syncope, in the action of the body politic. This was revolution, and the Parliaments that assembled afterwards referred their legal origin to that revolution.
Is it not obvious enough, that men cannot get together and count themselves, and say they are so many hundreds and so many thousands, and judge of their own qualifications, and call themselves the people, and set up a government? Why, another set of men, forty miles off, on the same day, with the same propriety, with as good qualifications, and in as large numbers, may meet and set up another government; one may meet at Newport and another at Chepachet, and both may call themselves the people. What is this but anarchy? What liberty is there here, but a tumultuary, tempestuous, violent, stormy liberty, a sort of South American liberty, without power except in its spasms, a liberty supported by arms to-day, crushed by arms to-morrow? Is that our liberty?
The regular action of popular power, on the other hand, places upon public liberty the most beautiful face that ever adorned that angel form. All is regular and harmonious in its features, and gentle in its operation. The stream of public authority, under American liberty, running in this channel, has the strength of the Missouri, while its waters are as transparent as those of a crystal lake. It is powerful for good. It produces no tumult, no violence, and no wrong;—
"Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong, without rage; without o'erflowing, full."