to vote may vote;
second, that his vote may be sent forward and counted, and so he may
exercise his part of sovereignty, in common with his fellow-citizens.

In the exercise of political power through representatives we know
nothing, we never have known any thing, but such an exercise as should
take place through the prescribed forms of law. When we depart from
that, we shall wander as widely from the American track as the pole is
from the track of the sun.

I have said that it is one principle of the American system, that the
people limit their governments, National and State. They do so; but it
is another principle, equally true and certain, and, according to my
judgment of things, equally important, that the people often _limit
themselves_. They set bounds to their own power. They have chosen to
secure the institutions which they establish against the sudden impulses
of mere majorities. All our institutions teem with instances of this. It
was their great conservative principle, in constituting forms of
government, that they should secure what they had established against
hasty changes by simple majorities. By the fifth article of the
Constitution of the United States, Congress, two thirds of both houses
concurring, may propose amendments of the Constitution; or, on the
application of the legislatures of two thirds of the States, may call a
convention; and amendments proposed in either of these forms must be
ratified by the legislatures or conventions of three fourths of the
States. The fifth article of the Constitution, if it was made a topic
for those who framed the "people's constitution" of Rhode Island, could
only have been a matter of reproach. It gives no countenance to any of
their proceedings, or to any thing like them. On the contrary, it is one
remarkable instance of the enactment and application of that great
American principle, that the constitution of government should be
cautiously and prudently interfered with, and that changes should not
ordinarily be begun and carried through by bare majorities.

But the people limit themselves also in other ways. They limit
themselves in the first exercise of their political rights. They limit
themselves, by all their constitutions, in two important respects; that
is to say, in regard to the qualifications of _electors_, and in regard
to the qualifications of the _elected_. In every State, and in all the
States, the people have precluded themselves from voting fo