336 Wisconsin state Agricultural Society. 
Tracing the progress of mankind in the ascending path of civil¬ 
ization, enlightenment, and moral and intellectual culture, they 
found that the divine ordinance of government, in every stage of 
the ascent, was adjustable on principles of common reason to the 
actual condition of a people, and always had for its objects, in the 
benevolent counsels of the divine wisdom, the happiness, the ex¬ 
pansion, the security, the elevation of society, and the redemption 
of man. They sought in vain for any title of authority of man over 
man, except of superior capacity and higher morality. They found 
the origin of castes and ranks, and principalities and powers, tem¬ 
poral or spiritual, in this conception. They recognized the people 
as the structure, the temple, the fortress, which the great Artificer 
all the while cared for and built up. As through the long march of 
time this work advanced, the forms and fashions of government 
seemed to them to be but the scaffolding and apparatus by which 
the development of a people’s greatness w^as shaped and sustained. 
Satisfied that the people whose institutions were now to be pro¬ 
jected had reached all that measure of strength and fitness of prep¬ 
aration for self-government which old institutions could give, they 
fearlessly seized the happy opportunity to clothe the people with 
the majestic attributes of their own sovereignty, and consecrate 
them to the administration of their own priesthood. 
The repudiation by England of the spiritual power of Rome at 
the reformation was, by every estimate, a stupendous innovation in 
the rooted allegiance of the people, a profound disturbance of all 
adjustments of authority. But Henry VIII, when he displaced 
thedorninion of the pope, proclaimed himself the head of the church. 
The overthrow of the ancient monarchy of France, by the fierce tri¬ 
umph of an enraged people, was a catastrophe that shook the ar¬ 
rangements of society from center to circumference. But Napo¬ 
leon, when he pushed aside the royal line of St. Louis, announced: 
“ I am the people crowned,” and set up a plebeian emperor as the 
impersonation and depositary in him and his line forever of the 
people’s sovereignty. The founders of our commonwealth con¬ 
ceived that the people of these colonies needed no interception of 
the supreme control of their own affairs, no conciliations of mere 
names and images of power, from which the pith and vigor of 
authority had departed. They, therefore, did not hesitate to throw 
down the partitions of power and right, and break up the distribu- 
