not enlarge their limits, nor can oppression and usurpation contract them. Wherever a human being is to be found, there these rights of necessity exist. They owe nothing of their strength to conventional usages and laws, nor are they sustained in any fuller force because they may happen to commend themselves to the approbation of enlightened men. They are rooted in the individual, and cannot by any violence be wrested from his nature: they are among the necessary conditions of his being.

Acquired rights exist by a different tenure. They hold their title either by concession, by compromise, or by compact. Their prerogative is more nicely defined. Certain limits bound them, beyond which their progress is forbidden. They are described with accuracy, and secured by due processes of legal enactment. Of such are the privileges of the subject, or the citizen. The former holds his by virtue of a kingly concession or compromise; in either case admitting the subject to rights and prerogatives which he does not naturally possess. The latter enjoys his by virtue of his compact with the general authority of which he is a component part.

It is only of the rights of the citizen that we propose to speak in this place all others being foreign to the subject under consideration -and not of the natural, but of the acquired, rights of the citizen.

As the human race is constituted, its entire history illustrates the imperative necessity of some method of social organization. Left to themselves, all things would immediately relapse into a condition of misrule and barbarism. Certain powers must be vested in certain individuals, from whom, by a reverse process, all acts of authority are to emanate. Influences which one individual would not permit any indifferent person to exercise over himself and his interests by a consent, either expressed or implied, he freely allows some other person to exert without protest or opposition.

Hence arise forms of government that give character to the deeds of men, and shape the destiny of nations. Hence ensue decrees, edicts, proclamations, and laws. These evidences of authority testify everywhere to the admitted necessity of some ruling and guiding

power. They are an expression of the opinion of all men, that a controlling authority of some character is demanded by every consideration of human welfare.

There can exist but two general forms of government, let the specific titles of the various kinds of authority be what they may. Every government must be either arbitrary or constitutional. Every thing that tends to usurpation, or that operates to defraud individuals of the enjoyment of their natural rights, no matter in what cause or name professed, belongs to absolutism and arbitrariness. Some governments style themselves constitutional, whose very constitutions are arbitrary in themselves, and do not receive their vitality from any cooperation of the popular will. Their practices give the lie to their professions, proving them what they wish to avoid seeming to be. Principles strike their root much deeper than professions, and by their natural fruits their true character is understood.

Constitutional or voluntary forms of government derive their authority from the immediate consent of the governed; that is the only source of their power. They are but the emphatic expression of the popular will, and, as that will changes its direction, must they alter the direction of their authority.

The American Government is of the strictly constitutional form. No powers reside in it but those delegated by the people, who are its founders. It derives no authority from usurpation, but the whole of it from voluntary cession. Its existence and its strength alike depend upon the spirit and intelligence of those who give it vitality and support. Its powers are every one carefully described and defined. Its prerogatives have a fixed and unalterable limit. The natural rights of man are not invaded by any of its usurpations, but are retained inviolate by the individual, and guarded from aggression with a jealous watchfulness.

Indeed, the question is seriously agitated under this auspicious form of government-How much is it profitable for a man to be governed? How far is it best for him to yield up his own rights in the name of the welfare of the whole? Where shall the dividing line be

drawn that is to separate the control of one's self from the control of a voluntarily constructed authority? From the discussion of such a question various conclusions have, at different times, been arrived at; and, among others, that "that is the best government which governs men the least." This seems almost to have become an aphorism; and the spirit of the idea is by no means inoperative in the general workings of our political system.

Under our government no man is a subject—all men are citizens; because it is never acknowledged that the government, deriving its existence primarily from the individual, is superior in itself to its origin. In the nature of things, it could not be. A citizen is in no manner a subject, nor can a subject be a citizen. However specious may be the reasoning that seeks to make the two characters seem compatible with one another, their differences are too wide to be reconcilable. The subject makes concessions that the citizen would not admit. The subject lacks inherent power, not because he has delegated it to another, but because he never yet was allowed its possession or exercise. By the citizen it has been vested in other hands for the very purpose of its more safe and careful administration; reverting to him after stated intervals, to be again trusted to other depositaries for the same general purpose of a healthful and constitutional exercise.

Citizenship, therefore, implies no ordinary privileges. Its possession argues from the individual directly to the government. It connects the man with all the operations of the laws and the whole scope of public institutions, and associates him in close relations with whatever belongs to the common welfare. It removes the many tendencies to selfishness and egotism in his permitted pursuits, and makes him large, comprehensive, and generous in his conduct and views. It widens the sphere of individual sentiment and action, so that a man may at the same time be true to his own interest, and not forgetful of the vast and complicated interests of the whole.

In fine, citizenship can be enjoyed only where men are free. In any other condition, the character of the possession at once is changed,

being held on terms that impliedly declare the government to be arbitrary, and the people to be subjects. It belongs only to institutions that are democratic in their nature, and to states of society in which men are the arbiters of their own rights and fortunes.

For the possession of such prerogatives there certainly should be some rigid and absolute qualifications. To put one's self in direct relationship with the moral and social interests of a great nation, it should be insisted that there exist certain preliminary conditions. Such a relationship should not be rashly entered upon, nor without serious thought of the mutual result to both the individual and the mass. The government, relying on the intelligence and understanding of each one of the vast number that contribute to its character, it must be seen that no single violation of the conditions of such a connection can

pass without its proper share of wrong to the whole. If the individual forgets his duty as a party to the general compact, the rest are defrauded of that moral and political security for which they had a perfect right to hold him responsible. If he neglect the obligations of his oath and pledge, the rest are so far losers by his act of repudiation. If he be a tool in the designing hands of those who intrigue for the overthrow of political freedom, the entire nation is to that degree involved in the web of fear and insecurity.

The origin of all government is property; the manner in which that property is held determines its form. If the lands of a community have but one possessor, it is an autocracy; if partitioned by a few, an aristocracy; if the inherent right of the whole people, this forms a democracy. Res-republica, common-wealth, represent, not merely the form, but the basis of government.

Man is entitled to sustenance and protection from that society in which nature places him at birth. There are, however, certain causes which may compel him to forsake one community for another. What relation do his acquired privileges bear to the rights of the new society?

A stranger can only acquire property in a foreign community by permission of the owners-that is, the state. But in acquiring this,

is he necessarily entitled to all the privileges of the natives? Because he has forsaken the land of his birth, is the land of his adoption compelled by any law, human or divine, to place him on a perfect equality with her own children? By the political constitution of the new society he may enjoy all their privileges, but, in the nature of things, he has not, and never can have, such a right to them as the sons of the soil. That which is granted as a favor, can never be asserted as a right.

In a republic the power is in the hands of the whole people, for the entire land is theirs. For convenience in legislation they appoint men to represent their interests, hence the representative is the servant of the represented. This is obvious: no man can represent the interests of others unless delegated so to do; this power conferred necessarily subjects him to the will of those who bestow the office. Hence no man has a right to office, which it may be in the power of others to refuse.

Representatives having to be chosen, there arises a momentous question-What gives the right to vote? We have shown that where the right to property belongs to all, power is universal; therefore, suffrage must be universal. But we must define this, in regard to men who have not a born-right in the country, but simply one of tolerance or permission.

Government takes cognizance of the entire property of the country, that is to say, the land and its products belonging to the sons of the soil the entire community decide (by representation or otherwise) in the general interest. Strangers arriving in their midst receive as a gift a certain portion of that which is the right only of the nativeborn. Is it logical to assert that this gift carries with it the right to vote, or, in other words, to legislate for those who have just granted what it was in their power to refuse? Such an argument is monstrous, yet it is one which we hear constantly asserted.

Escape from the then existing systems of European government, as well as from its religious hierarchies, prompted our forefathers to settle what were termed the American colonies. In process of time they achieved a separate nationality in regard to other countries, a