our Revolution broke out the minds of men everywhere throughout the British empire were oppressed by scruples, resting on the teachings of revered names in the Church, as to the sinfulness of resistance to the usurpations of the King, even when he was evidently laying violent hands on the very temple of freedom itself.1

§ 243. Among the most difficult tasks of the men of our Revolution, therefore, was to disabuse the public mind of the heresy of Passive Obedience or Non-Resistance. The discussions preceding the revolt are filled with arguments tending to make it clear to tender consciences in the colonies, that in entering upon a course of opposition to King and Parliament, they were not guilty necessarily of a sin or a crime.2 In this great work, naturally, the clergy of the period bore a conspicuous part. It was left to no particular class, however, to clear up a doubt, which strikes the mind in our day as absurd. It was preached down in the pulpits, argued against in the halls of legislation and upon the stump, and, to make sure that it should be deprived of all further power to mislead, it was nailed to the wall for public reprobation in the great manifesto of our Revolution, and in our Bills of Rights.

When the fathers, therefore, in the Declaration of Independence, solemnly affirmed the right of a people to alter or abolish their government, whenever it should have become destructive of its proper ends, "laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them should seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness," they were fight. ing the old dragon of Passive Obedience, now long since dead; to our age, the shadow of a peril long past and apparently so baseless, that we can scarcely realize that it ever existed. By this declaration, in other words, the statesmen of the Revolution meant merely to deny, that the people could not, without mortai sin, arrest their rulers in a career of usurpation, even if their op. position should terminate in blood; and to affirm, that government being instituted for the good of the people, and not the people created as slaves to the government, obedience was due

1 On the whole subject of Non-Resistance, sec Macaulay, Hist. Eng., Vol. I. pp. 37, 38, 324-326; May, Const. Hist. Eng., Vol. I. pp. 15-104; Hallam, Const. Hist. Eng., pp. 237, 238, 491, 493; Hume, Hist. Eng., VI. pp. 133, 134. 2 See Bancroft, Hist. U. S., Vol. V. pp. 195, 206, 288, 289, 324, 325.

from the one to the other only so long as it was not destructive of the ends of government.

The same motives which led to the insertion of the clause in the Declaration of Independence, induced the framers of our Constitutions to place it in the Bills of Rights prefacing those instruments.

§ 244. A confirmation of this construction of this clause in our Constitutions is found in the context to it in some of those instruments. Thus, the Maryland Constitution of 1776, the New Hampshire Constitution of 1792, and the Tennessee Constitution of 1834, contained immediately after the clause in question the following declaration :

"The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."

§ 245. It remains now to notice the third and last kind of documents referred to, namely, Constitutions containing clauses in some respects resembling those commented upon above, but of which the effect is different, or the reverse. These are the Constitutions of Virginia, Rhode Island, and Maryland.

In the Bills of Rights of the various Virginia Constitutions is found the following declaration:

"That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community. Of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration; and that when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal."

Now, the authors of this declaration evidently intended by it to assert for "a majority of the community" either a legal or a revolutionary right. If it was the latter, why confine to a majority a right which belongs to one man or a hundred men as perfectly as to a million, or to a majority of all the citizens?

Again: unless by the term majority be meant that which is greater, not in numbers, but in force, the clause, as declaratory

of a revolutionary right, is absurd. Nature knows no majority but that of force. The majorities, of which we hear so much, of the male adult citizens invested with the suffrage, are matters of positive regulation. Does Nature determine the age at which a citizen becomes an adult citizen? or does she confine the exercise of the suffrage to males only?

As, however, that use of the word majority is unprecedented, it is clear that the words referred to were intended to assert a legal right. But if the right belongs to a majority to alter or abolish the existing form of government as a legal right, it must be to a majority of the electors, acting in pursuance of some law passed according to the forms of the Constitution. No other majority and no other people are known to the laws, nor could the action of any other majority or any other people be denominated legal. I conclude, therefore, that the clause refers merely to the ordinary and accepted modes of amending or repealing Constitutions, leaving a choice of them to the existing government.

That the words referred to have been generally considered objectionable, as liable to misconstruction, may be inferred from the fact that, although a great number of the Constitutions formed in other States have copied the Virginia declaration, not one of them has ever retained those words. One instance will suffice. The Vermont Bill of Rights declares "that the community” — not “a majority of the community," as in that of Virginia "hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right," &c.1

§ 246. In the Rhode Island Constitution, framed in 1842, is found the following declaration:

"In the words of the Father of his Country, we declare, that 'the basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and alter their Constitutions of government; but that the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.'"

So, also, to a similar effect, is a clause in the Maryland Constitution of 1851, which declares,

1 See also the Constitutions of Connecticut, 1818; Alabama, 1819; Mississippi, 1832; Tennessee, 1834; Arkansas, 1836; Pennsylvania, 1838; Florida, 1839; Texas, 1845; Kentucky, 1850; and Oregon, 1857,—in which the same omission is observable.

"That all government of right originates from the people, 1s founded in compact only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole; and they have at all times, according to the mode prescribed in this Constitution, the unalienable right to alter, reform, or abolish their form of government, in such manner as they may deem expedient."

In these two Constitutions there is no declaration of the right of revolution, those clauses which are usually so worded as to assert that right being, in these, confined by restrictive clauses, so as to make the right involved a mere legal right to alter or abol. ish forms of government in modes appointed by law.

It is obvious-recurring to the clause in the Rhode Island Constitution that, if a form of government remains unaltered until "changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people," it will remain so forever, unless the modes and instrumentalities employed to effect the change are appointed and regulated by positive law. The whole people cannot meet in Convention. No declaration of their will can be explicit, no representation of them by a few can be authentic, unless made and authorized through some organ empowered to utter their voice.

In the Maryland declaration it is difficult to give any effect at all to the concluding words, " in such manner as they may deem expedient." Referring to the debates preceding the adoption of the section, it is apparent that the effect of inserting the clause restricting alterations of the Constitution "to the mode prescribed in this Constitution," was not well considered. Striking out from the clause, as it now reads, the restrictive words, it conforms closely to those inserted in so many of our Constitutions of which I have before spoken. As Maryland had suffered from revolutionary attempts to alter her Constitution, her Convention desired to narrow within safe limits that important right. It therefore inserted the restrictive words, but neglected to strike out those which are significant only as declaratory of the old revolutionary right, thus seeming to negative its own intention. The only construction that can be given to the section which will allow all of its parts to stand, is to refer the clause, "in such manner as they may deem expedient," to the words "alter" and "reform," and not to the nearer word “abolish." It would then mean that the people have an inalienable

right, in the mode prescribed in the Constitution, to alter or reforin the same in such manner as they may deem expedientthat is, make such changes therein as they please - or the right wholly to abolish it. Thus, by a sacrifice of grammatical accuracy, the work of the Convention is redeemed from self-contradiction.

§ 247. (c.) The last variety of Conventions which I shall mention consists of those exceptional bodies by which were effected, first, the so-called secession of certain slave States from our Union in 1860 and 1861; and secondly, the reconstruction of those States preparatory to a resumption of their normal relations to the Union in 1864, 1865, 1866, and 1868.

The States concerned, in the order in which their ordinances of secession were passed, were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Kentucky the ordinance of the first having been passed in December, 1860, and that of the last in November, 1861.

It is not my purpose to enter fully upon the history of the Secession Conventions, since the view I take of them renders only a few of the leading facts relating to the call of these bodies important.

The Secession Conventions were called avowedly to effect, by revolutionary means, the disruption of the American Union, established by the war of Independence, and confirmed by the Federal Constitution of 1789. The election of Mr. Lincoln upon a platform deemed menacing to the interests of those States, was the wrong, to redress which the rupture of their constitutional relations to their sister States was attempted. By concert among the leading men of the South, and perhaps in pursuance of a long cherished purpose, Conventions were called in every State but one above named, as soon after the announce. ment of Mr. Lincoln's election as the popular attachment to the existing government could be made to give way to a desire for Southern Independence. Tennessee called no Convention, but as her legislature assumed to act as a Convention, and in that capacity passed a pretended Ordinance of Secession, I have reckoned that body amongst the Secession Conventions.

248. The mode of calling these Conventions was as follows: The legislatures of many of the States meeting, by law, not far