interested and perverted
views, is omnipotent. * * * Numbers with them, is the great element of
free Government. A majority is infallible and omnipotent. 'The right
divine to rule in Kings,' is only transferred to their majority. The
very object of all Constitutions, in free popular Government, is to
restrain the majority. Constitutions, therefore, according to their
theory, must be most unrighteous inventions, restricting liberty. None
ought to exist; but the body politic ought simply to have a political
organization, to bring out and enforce the will of the majority. This
theory is a remorseless despotism. In resisting it, as applicable to
ourselves, we are vindicating the great cause of free Government, more
important, perhaps, to the World, than the existence of all the United
States."

In his Special Message to the Confederate Congress at Montgomery, April
29, 1861, Mr. Jefferson Davis said:

"From a period as early as 1798, there had existed in all the States a
Party, almost uninterruptedly in the majority, based upon the creed that
each State was, in the last resort, the sole judge, as well of its
wrongs as of the mode and measure of redress. * * * The Democratic
Party of the United States repeated, in its successful canvas of 1836,
the declaration, made in numerous previous political contests, that it
would faithfully abide by and uphold the principles laid down in the
Kentucky and Virginia Legislatures of [1798 and] 1799, and that it
adopts those principles as constituting one of the main foundations of
its political creed."

In a letter addressed by the Rebel Commissioners in London (Yancey, Rost
and Mann), August 14, 1861, to Lord John Russell, Secretary of Foreign
Affairs, it appears that they said: "It was from no fear that the Slaves
would be liberated, that Secession took place. The very Party in power
has proposed to guarantee Slavery forever in the States, if the South
would but remain in the Union." On the 4th of May preceding, Lord John
had received these Commissioners at his house; and in a letter of May
11, 1861, wrote, from the Foreign Office, to Lord Lyons, the British
Minister at Washington, a letter, in which, alluding to his informal
communication with them, he said: "One of these gentlemen, speaking for
the others, dilated on the causes which had induced the Southern States
to Secede from the Northern. The principal of these causes, he said,
was not Slavery, but the very hi