329 



each other, iu their structure and character, than they are, respectively, to the absolute 

 governments, even of their own class. All constitutional governments, of whatever 

 class they may be, take the sense of the community by its parts— each through its appro- 

 priate organ ; and regard the sense of all its parts, as the sense of the whole. They all 

 rest on the right of suffrage, and the responsibility of rulers, directly or indirectly. On 

 the contrary, all absolute governments, of whatever form, concentrate power iu one un- 

 controlled and irresponsible individual or body, whose will is regarded as the sense of 

 the community. And, hence, the great and broad distinction between governments is 

 _ — not that of the one, the few, or the many — but of the constitutional, and the absolute." 

 Thus far, I think the principles of concurrent majorities, as expounded by Mr. Cal- 

 houn, is generally conceded in this country by thinking men ; nor do I know of any 

 serious difference of opinion among American statesmen and publicists of approved 

 reputation prior to the war. The heated controversies between parties, represented iu 

 the popular imagination by Webster and Clay on the one hand, and Calhoun and Hayne 

 on the other, was merely as to the application or extension of the principle. Mr. Cal- 

 houn ineflt'ect held that the principles of rational constitutional government required that 

 every class or minority of respectable proportions, which by sectional division, peculiar 

 interests or otherwise, stood permanently separated and distinguished in opinion and in 

 interest from the rest of the community, should have, as the only efficient means of self- 

 protection, a veto power ; which, as a principle of political science, was but to assert the 

 right of every community of considerable proportions to self-government; but he 

 further asserted, as a principle of the actual constitution, the right of every State to 

 nullify a law tliat it deemed unconstitutional, or, as a last resort, to withdraw from the 

 Union. This was the actual issue ; which, iu its result, consigned to obscurity the works 

 of one of the purest statesmen, and one of the most acute, profound, and analytical 

 minds of modern times, and which finally terminated in a war that cost a million lives, 

 and billions of money. Upon the merits of the question, in view of the passions engen- 

 dered in this country by the struggles of a century, and the culminating horrors of civil 

 war, it is too early yet to justify a discussion. We liave entered upon it simply for the 

 purpose of showing that the principle of the division, not only of the sovereign powers 

 generally, but also of the legislative power particularly, is not in question— for to deny it 

 is to <1eny the possibility of constitutional government — but the question of the extent of 

 its application only. 



(6) Mr. Ahrens, while agreeing with Aristotle's division of States, is, I think errone- 

 ously, of the opinion that it "touches only the surface of political relations," and he 

 adds, "that it is necessary to determine the form of the State accoiding to its funda- 

 mental idea, or according to the principle which animates all political organization, and 

 which gives it its type and its principal character" (<&.). But this, as we have seen, is 

 precisely the method pursued by Aristotle, whose conclusion seems also substantially 

 to agree with his own. 



(c) " He who bids the law be supreme, makes God supreme, but he who entrusts man 

 with supreme power, gives it to a wild beast, for such his appetites sometimes make 

 him " (Bk. iii. Chap. xvi). " The supreme power should be lodged in laws duly made " 

 (Bk. iii. Chap. xi). 



(d) " Some French statesmen with good intentions, but without much success, have 

 attempted to oppose to this destructive conception of the sovereignty of the people, the 



idea of the sovereignty of reason or justice The error which recognizes the only 



fundamental form of State in absolute democracy is here opiX)sed by the error of ideoc- 

 racy " ( Theory of the State, pp. 499, 500). But, as the author justly observes, iu this doc- 

 trine the fact is overlooked that "right can only belong to a person, and that political 

 supremacy can only be ascribed to a political personality." 



(e) " Louis XIV and the Jacobins of the Convention of 1793," he says, " alike regarded 

 themselves as omnipotent. Both were wrong. Modern representative government 

 knows nothing of absolute power, and there is no such thing on earth as absolute inde- 



