Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1853-05-28
WASHINGTON.
81 Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
insepArable."
TUESDAY, NAY "a, 1853.
REFERENCE OFLEGLSLATYVE POWERS TO
THE PEOPLE,

/
some of the very latest of its members, series of
decisions on subjectmatters entirely unconnected
with each other, all consentaneous and affirming the
same point of law, from Judges of the Supreme
Court of the United States. That point u.s. the un-
consttutionality of the reference of any law to the
People in their primary assemblies for enactment
or ratification, and the absolute nullity of any law
SO enacted, ratified, or ordered to be referred.
/ We have never ourselves entertained doubt that
such course Of proceeding was absolutely uncon
sttutional in the first place. directly at variance
with the first section of the first article Of the Con-
stituhon of the United States and out Of all keep
ing in the second place, with the known character
of our institutions and with the traditional character
of all representative Governments.
Of pure democracies the world has seen but few,
and the character and proceedings of those it has
seen are not such as to encourage tho revival of
such, even if they possible for any community
too large to admit of assembage of all her male
voting population at single time, and in single
place, where they may hear, debate and decide all
questions whatsoever whether legislative executive
or judicial.
Such Government was the Athenian Republic,
in which every possible question, from the election
of magistrates, the ratification of treaties not the
declaration only of wars but their conduct and the
appointment of their generals, down to the enact
ment Of the most trivial sumptuary law, and the
punishment or acquittal of the paltrest prisoner
was left to the people in their primary assemblies
! A pure democracy assumes that every individual
Of the community has equal capacity, equal leisure
equal genius and equal aptitude to be himself
judge, general, diplomatist law-giver, statesman,
governor and to play the part of such to the credit
and benefit of his country.
| A representative government, whether republi-
can monarchical aAirms the equal right of every
qualified voter-whether its suffrage be universal
or conditional-to have an influence over AMI to
give deny his assent to enactments on all these
questions, and others incidental to the government
of the country but denies and repudiates the idea
of his equal capacity leisure genius, and aptitude,
er pso tacto, to fill in person every Office and deal
of his own knowledge and power with every
question.
The mass is sufficiently wise, honest, prudent,
capable to choose at their pleasure such ndivi
duals they believe capable them in these
various capacities and to their counsels, guidance,
leading, governance, they commit their welfare for
such periods and under such conditions as they
esteem sufficient to secure their liberties and in
dependence
To this man they grant it to be their executive
to these to exercise all Legislative power to these
to hear causes and give decisions to these to
mand their armies and direct their squadrons but
they no more claim the right to order, in tumultu-
Gus primary meetings other than their regular
sembages for electona purposes, the declaration of
this war, or the enactment of this law, than they
claim to direct the leader of their forces how to set
his regiments in the field, or the captains of their
ships which way to put their helms in hurricane.
representative government surrounds and pro-
tects itself by series Of elaborate checks and ba
lances Dreading its own liability to exctements,
impulses rash legislation or yet rasher execution, it
voluntarily deprives itself Of certain powers which
it commits to its own chosen delegates. Dreading
the possibility of their liability also to this inherent
human weakness it erects further bar to hasty ac-
ton, by causing every question to be originated and
debated by one, again debated by,a second, and
finally passed on by third power Of the State, be-
fore it becomes lawful to act upon it. In like
ner, with its judiciary tinstitutes series of courts
to which, in of error, causes may be successive
ly appealed in order to preserve itself from the IA
tai consequences of rash judgment.
| A pure democracy, in the reverse of all this,
consults, legslates, condemns, declares war, acts
once, and at single movement, time, and place,
impetuously, undoubtingly, irreversibly.
Had Athens been representative State instead
of naked democracy, Socrates and Phocion would
not have quaed the fatal hemlock Themistocles and
Xenophon would not have died in the service of the
stranger; Demosthenes had not persisted in exile,
nor Cleon led her armies to disgrace before Am
phipolis.
! Had Rome been pure democracy instead of a
representative republic, she would have made sub
mission to Hannibal after the fatal field of Canine
she would have punished Varro instead of thanking
him that he had not despaired of the republic ="
she would not have had twenty egions not less than
one hundred thousand men, in the field in the year
following that terrible defeat when her male cti-
zens were reduced to two hundred and seventy
thousand only, would she ever have been styled
the mistress of the world
Such are emphatically the differences between a
free representative republic and a pure democracy.
The former we believe to be the very best the lat
ter to be nearly the most vicious of all governments
III a. nnnnt of rho TTnitaJ Ctaton Z.