ican to a despotic, or from a civilized to a barbaric
constitution.

The American constitution is democratic, in the sense that the people
are sovereign that all laws and public acts run in their name; that the
rulers are elected by them, and are responsible to them; but they are
the people territorially constituted and fixed to the soil,
constituting what Mr. Disraeli, with more propriety perhaps than he
thinks, calls a "territorial democracy." To this territorial
democracy, the real American democracy, stand opposed two other
democracies--the one personal and the other humanitarian--each alike
hostile to civilization, and tending to destroy the state, and capable
of sustaining government only on principles common to all despotisms.

In every man there is a natural craving for personal freedom and
unrestrained action--a strong desire to be himself, not another--to be
his own master, to go when and where he pleases, to do what he chooses,
to take what he wants, wherever he can find it, and to keep what he
takes. It is strong in all nomadic tribes, who are at once pastoral
and predatory, and is seldom weak in our bold frontier-men, too often
real "border ruffians." It takes different forms in different stages of
social development, but it everywhere identifies liberty with power.
Restricted in its enjoyment to one man, it makes him chief, chief of
the family, the tribe, or the nation; extended in its enjoyment to the
few, it founds an aristocracy, creates a nobility--for nobleman meant
originally only freeman, as it does his own consent, express or
constructive. This is the so-called Jeffersonian democracy, in which
government has no powers but such as it derives from the consent of the
governed, and is personal democracy or pure individualism
philosophically considered, pure egoism, which says, "I am God." Under
this sort of democracy, based on popular, or rather individual
sovereignty, expressed by politicians when they call the electoral
people, half seriously, half mockingly, "the sovereigns," there
obviously can be no state, no social rights or civil authority; there
can be only a voluntary association, league, alliance, or
confederation, in which individuals may freely act together as long as
they find it pleasant, convenient, or useful, but from which they may
separate or secede whenever they find it for their interest or their
pleasure to do so. State sovereignty and secession are based on the
same democra