LETTER I.
LOYALTY AND SOVEREIGNTY.
Dear Sir: I address you in your quality of President of the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge, and with reference to your speech and your letter to Mr. Crosby, published in the tracts issued by your Society. I should have done so sooner but that I hoped Mr. Crosby would himself have taken the matter in hand; and though it is somewhat late in the day, I venture to recall the public attention to what you have put forth, both because in a general view it is never too late to expose error on matters of fundamental importance, and because, in this case, there are some special reasons why it should be done, arising from your personal position. If you were a mere hackneyed party politician, I should not think it worth while to take any public notice of what you have said.
I should be glad to confine myself strictly to the question of the truth or error of what you have advanced, apart from its bearings on yourself personally; but as most of what you have put forth is in the way of vindicating your loyalty and justifying your conduct at this time, I shall have to consider also its validity for your purpose. This is a necessity of the case which I have not made. Before proceeding to your letter to Mr. Crosby, I shall first consider some matters in your speech.
In a crisis such as this, when the clutch of the wickedest rebellion the world ever saw is grappling the throat of the national existence, you are openly in opposition to the action of the Government, and apparently in sympathy with the rebels. Yet you claim to be loyal, and you vindicate your claim in a very remarkable way. Loyalty with you is fidelity to the sovereign. That sovereign is the people. To that sovereign you profess to bear true allegiance, and therefore your loyalty is not to be impeached, however much you may oppose yourself to the action of the authorities constituted by the sovereign. A singular sort of loyalty; very much of a piece, some may say, with the religion of the man who disobeys the bidding of those whom God bids him obey, because of his profound reverence for the supreme authority of God!
You, of course, deny this. You make the issue that the action of the constituted authorities is contrary to the will of the sovereign—is, in fact, the exercise of usurped powers. You propose to appeal directly to the sovereign for the determination of this issue; that is, you propose to bring the sovereign to be of the same mind with you, if you can. 'We mean,' you say, 'to use our rights of free discussion, and to look for the answer to our appeal to the ballot box.' And you ask, 'Is it disloyalty to appeal to the sovereign, or to exercise that portion of the sovereign power which of right belongs to us, as part of the people?'
Now, there is certainly nothing necessarily disloyal in making and discussing before the people the issue you make, any more than there is anything necessarily villanous in a man's availing himself of his extreme legal rights before the courts: whether it be so in fact or not, depends on the circumstances, on the spirit, purpose, and effect of the thing. But there is a great deal of nonsense (pardon me) in calling this an exercise of that portion of the sovereign power which of right belongs to you as part of the people—nonsense which, if it were merely nonsense, and as palpable to everybody as it is to those who are accustomed to correct thinking and accurate expression on the subject, it would not be worth while to expose; but which, being taken for sound sense (as it is very likely to be by many of the people among whom you have undertaken to diffuse political knowledge), becomes very pernicious nonsense, that ought not to be suffered to pass.
A portion of the sovereign power belonging to you and your associates as individuals! The sovereignty of the nation split up into fractional shares—each of you possessing (say) one thirty-millionth part of the integral unit, and possessing it, of course, exclusively and therefore separately, if you are to exercise it individually, even in the way of clubbing your respective shares as you propose! Heard ever any one the like? Why, you might as well say that each individual in the nation possesses the entire sovereign power. As well say thirty million whole sovereigns, as thirty million fractional sovereigns. Equal falsehood, equal absurdity, either way.
Political sovereignty is as incapable of division as it is of forfeiture or of alienation. It is the right and power which society—considered as the state—has to do whatever is necessary to its existence and welfare. It resides in the whole people as one body politic. It is not an attribute of individuals. Individual rulers are sometimes called sovereigns; but they cannot be such in the strict and just sense of the term. It is simply impossible that any individual should possess in himself the inherent, indefeasible, inalienable, and inviolable right and power to govern a nation; and it is no less impossible that you and your associates, in your separate capacity as individuals, should possess any 'portion' of it, and therefore none 'of right belongs' to you.
I do not deny your 'rights of free discussion.' But I deny that they are sovereign rights, and that the exercise of them is an exercise of sovereign power. They are individual, personal rights, and that of itself determines the absurdity of calling them sovereign.