r everybody
they might wish to vote for; they have limited their own right of
choosing. They have said, We will elect no man who has not such and such
qualifications. We will not vote ourselves, unless we have such and such
qualifications. They have also limited themselves to certain prescribed
forms for the conduct of elections. They must vote at a particular
place, at a particular time, and under particular conditions, or not at
all. It is in these modes that we are to ascertain the will of the
American people; and our Constitution and laws know no other mode. We
are not to take the will of the people from public meetings, nor from
tumultuous assemblies, by which the timid are terrified, the prudent are
alarmed, and by which society is disturbed. These are not American modes
of signifying the will of the people, and they never were. If any thing
in the country, not ascertained by a regular vote, by regular returns,
and by regular representation, has been established, it is an exception,
and not the rule; it is an anomaly which, I believe, can scarcely be
found.

It is true that at the Revolution, when all government was immediately
dissolved, the people got together, and what did they do? Did they
exercise sovereign power? They began an inceptive organization, the
object of which was to bring together representatives of the people, who
should form a government. This was the mode of proceeding in those
States where their legislatures were dissolved. It was much like that
had in England upon the abdication of James the Second. He ran away, he
abdicated. He threw the great seal into the Thames. I am not aware that,
on the 4th of May, 1842, any great seal was thrown into Providence
River! But James abdicated, and King William took the government; and
how did he proceed? Why, he at once requested all who had been members
of the old Parliament, of any regular Parliament in the time of Charles
the Second, to assemble. The Peers, being a standing body, could of
course assemble; and all they did was to recommend the calling of a
convention, to be chosen by the same electors, and composed of the same
numbers, as composed a Parliament. The convention assembled, and, as all
know, was turned into a Parliament. This was a case of necessity, a
revolution. Don't we call it so? And why? Not merely because a new
sovereign then ascended the throne of the Stuarts, but because there was
a change in the organization of the government. The