sovereign, and the only sense in which they are sovereign at all, is when organized into a state, or body politic, and acting through its forms. No action of the inhabitants of a given territory, even if it include ninety-nine out of a hundred of all the individuals, is done by the PEOPLE, unless done in and through the forms prescribed by the political organism; and all action done in opposition to that organism, no matter how many are engaged in it, is the action of the mob, disorderly, illegal, and to a greater or less degree criminal, treasonable in fact, and as such legitimately punishable.

We do not wish to be too severe on the advocates of the doctrine we oppose. It has heen with most of them only a momentary error, and which, though pelting us unmercifully for exposing it, they will quietly abandon, and without confessing it, feel shame for ever having advocated. Confident of this, we give them leave to say all the hard things of us they please; for we acknowledge that for a moment we too fell into the same error. Our sympathy with the end which we saw a portion of our friends struggling to gain, and by means which were justifiable only on the doctrine in question, blinded us for a time, as we presume it has others, to the real character of the doctrine itself. Let this confession suffice for us and for our brethren. They of course will not accede to it, but we venture to predict, that, as the excitement of the struggle to which we have alluded subsides, and matters reassume their orderly and peaceful course, there will be found few so bold as to reiterate the doctrine.

But the fact that this doctrine has been put forth, in sober earnest, by men in high places as well as by men in low places, is itself an argument in our favor, and goes to prove that the people are not to be relied on so implicitly as some of our democratic friends pretend. The case we have had in mind, strikingly illustrates the sort of danger to which, under a democracy, interpreted to mean the absolute sovereignty of the people, we are peculiarly and at all times exposed. The ends the people seek to gain, are, we willingly admit, for the most part just and desirable; but the justice and desira

VOL. XII.-NO. LVIII.

49

bleness of the end, almost always blind them to the true character and tendency of the means by which they seek to gain it. They become intent on the end, so intent as to be worked up to a passion for it,-for the people. never act but in a passion,-and then in going to it, they break down everything which obstructs or hinders their progress. Now, what they break down, though in the way of gaining that particular end, may after all be our only guaranty of other ends altogether more valuable. Here is the danger. What more desirable than personal freedom? What more noble than to strike off the fetters of the slave? Aye, but if, in striking off his fetters, you trample on the constitution and laws, which are your only guaranty of freedom for those who are now free, and also for those you propose to make free, what do you gain to freedom? Great wrong may be done in seeking even a good end, if we look not well to the means we adopt. Philanthropy itself not unfrequently is so intent on the end, that in going to it, it tramples down more rights than it vindicates by success. We own, therefore, that the older we grow, and the longer we study in that school, the only one in which fools will learn, the more danger do we see in popular passions, and the less is our confidence in the wisdom and virtue of the people.

"But what is our resource against all these evils? What remedy do you propose?" These are fair questions, but we do not propose to answer them now. We may hereafter undertake to do it, and what we shall have to say will be arranged under the heads of the Constitution, the Church, and Individual Statesmen. Without an efficient Constitution, which is not only an instrument through which the people govern, but which is a power that governs them, by effectually confining their action to certain specific subjects, there is and can be no good government, no individual liberty. Without the influence of wise and patriotic statesmen, whose importance, in our adulation of the people as a mass, we have underrated, and without the Christian Church exerting the hallowed and hallowing influences of Christianity upon the people both as individuals and as the body politic, we see

little hope, even with the best constitution, of securing the blessings of freedom and good government. But these are matters into the discussion of which we cannot now enter. Our purpose in this Article has been to draw the attention of our political friends to certain heresies of doctrine which are springing up amongst us, and enlisting quite too much sympathy, and which we believe pregnant with mischief.

Democracy, in our judgment, has been wrongly defined to be a form of government; it should be understood of the end, rather than of the means, and be regarded as a principle rather than a form. The end we are to aim at, is the Freedom and progress of all men, especially of the poorest and most numerous class. He is a democrat who goes for the highest moral, intellectual, and physical elevation of the great mass of the people, especially of the laboring population, in distinction from a special devotion to the interests and pleasures of the wealthier, more refined, or more distinguished few. But the means by which this elevation is to be obtained, are not necessarily the institution of the purely democratic form of government. Here has been our mistake. We have been quite too ready to conclude that if we only once succeed in establishing Democracy, universal suffrage and eligibility, without constitutional restraints on the power of the people,-as a form of government, the end will follow as a matter of course. The considerations we have adduced, we think prove to the contrary.

In coming to this conclusion, it will be seen that we differ from our friends not in regard to the end, but in regard to the means. We believe, and this is the point on which we insist, that the end, freedom and progress, will not be secured by this loose radicalism with regard to popular sovereignty, and these demagogical boasts of the virtue and intelligence of the people, which have begun to be so fashionable. They who are seeking to advance the cause of humanity by warring against all existing institutions, religious, civil, or political, do seem to us to be warring against the very end they wish to gain.

It has been said, that mankind are

always divided into two parties, one of which may be called the Stationary Party, the other the Movement Party, or Party of Progress. Perhaps it is so; if so, all of us who have any just conceptions of our manhood, and of our duty to our fellow-men, must arrange ourselves on the side of the Movement. But the Movement itself is divided into two sections,-one the radical section, seeking progress by destruction; the other the conservative section, seeking progress through and in obedience to existing institutions. Without asking whether the rule applies beyond our own country, we contend that the conservative section is the only one that a wise man can call his own. In youth we feel differently. We find evil around us; we are in a dungeon; loaded all over with chains; we cannot make a single free movement; and we utter one long, loud, indignant protest against whatever is. We feel then that we can advance religion only by destroying the Church; learning only by breaking down the universities; and freedom only by abolishing the State. Well, this is one method of progress; but we ask, has it ever been known to be successful? Suppose that we succeed in demolishing the old edifice, in sweeping away all that the human race has been accumulating for the last six thousand years, what have we gained? Why, we are back where we were six thousand years ago; and without any assurance that the human race will not re-assume its old course and rebuild what we have destroyed.

As we grow older, sadder, and wiser, and pass from Idealists to Realists, we change all this, and learn that the only true way of carrying the race forward is through its existing institutions. We plant ourselves, if on the sad, still on the firm reality of things, and content ourselves with gaining what can be gained with the means existing institutions furnish. We seek to advance religion through and in obedience to the Church; law and social well-being through and in obedience to the State. Let it not be said that in adopting this last course, we change sides, leave the Movement, and go over to the Stationary Party. No such thing. We do not thus in age forget the dreams of our youth. It is because we remember those dreams, because young en

thusiasm has become firm and settled principle, and youthful hopes positive convictions, and because we would realize what we dared dream, when we first looked forth on the face of humanity, that we cease to exclaim "Liberty against Order," and substitute the practical formula, "LIBERTY ONLY IN AND THROUGH ORDER." The love of liberty loses none of its intensity. In the true manly heart it burns deeper and clearer with age, but it burns to enlighten and to warm, not to con

sume.

Here is the practical lesson we have sought to unfold. While we accept the end our democratic friends seek, while we feel our lot is bound up with theirs, we have wished to impress upon their minds, that we are to gain that end only through fixed and established order; not against authority, but by and in obedience to authority, and an authority competent to ordain and to guaranty it. Liberty without the guaranties of Authority, would be the worst of tyrannies.

VERILY, verily, we must confess, that the preceding paper has somewhat severely tested our firmness and good faith in adhering to the special agree ment by which, when the Boston Quarterly became merged into the capacious depth of the Democratic, its distinguished editor, as a correspondent to the latter, was to retain a full and free "liberty of speech and of the press," in the articles to proceed from his powerful pen-on his individual responsibility-unrestrained by the usual editorial censorship necessary to secure that general harmony and consistency proper to a work of this character.

We are sorry to perceive that in the general disaster of 1840, Mr. Brownson lost so much more than we did that is to say, not only the election, with all his hopes for the ascendency of the men and measures of his preference, but also his good humor with his party, and his confidence in the principle of popular self-government. He was twice, nay tenfold, more unfortunate than we were. In the very hour of overthrow, up from what seemed then the very bottomless pit of defeat, we were able to raise an undismayed, an undisheartened voice-de profundis clamavi-which neither the groans of vanquished friends nor the shouts of exultant foes could drown, of contented acquiescence in the wise chastening of Providence, and unshaken confidence in all the principles we had brought into the contest. We at least bore off our flag from the field, undisgraced by surrender or abandonment, and with all its fair blazonry untarnished save by honorable dust, and as ready as ever

to guide to atoning victory on some early and more auspicious day. Mr. Brownson, if he did not strike it to the enemy, seems at least to have impatiently torn off and cast away, in disgust and angry recantation, one of the best and brightest of the mottoes inscribed on its broad and beautiful field. Against this desecration of our glorious old oriflamme, we hold ourselves bound, in love to it and loyalty to all it represents, to enter our most emphatic protest.

What if the People did make a blunder in 1840-who claims, either for them or for any intelligence below the highest, the attribute of infallibility? To err is human-will not Mr. Brownson remember the rest of the noble line, and divinely forgive it ?after all the atonement which time has not been tardy to bring, for the unhappy mistake which has thus stirred his wrath against Democracy and the People. Nations like individuals are liable to their occasional moments de vertige. Even the good Homer can sometimes nod. There is a great deal of apology to be made for the People for their conduct in 1840,--and we will not stand by and hear them thus abused. Tell it not in Gath-proclaim it not in the streets of Ascalon-let no inkling of our present confidential whisper get out beyond the inner sanctums of our own private party caucuseslet every Democratic reader of the present page, on the approach of any suspicious looking character bearing the faintest resemblance to a possible Whig, incontinently thrust it out of sight, as in by-gone times he would