The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-04-01

conditions to start with. knowledge
and experience, customs and habits,
laws and institutions are all to be ac-
quired by the race in its onward march.
There has been no stopping place for
society from the beginning. AT every
stage there is a better and truer be-
yond. If absolute principles have been
enunciated in the past, it is the work
of the ages to incorporate them into
laws and to embody them in social life.
Hence, it is only as proposed meas
ures are expedient, under all the cir
cumstances broadly considered, that
they should become laws In a barbar-
Gus state of mankind, it would he in
vain TO commence with free inStitu-
tons Of any description; for such in
stitutions are only adapted to people
of advanced intelligence and expert
ence. All such savage tribes will pro-
vide for themselves various forms of
absolutism and chieftainship until they
are prepared for something better. But
passing by the consideration of bar
barous races and remote times, [ call
your attention to the present state of
civilization, and to the people whom
we represent. What is expedient for
Utah? and especially, what is expedient
with respect to the electoral system
that we are about to pass upon? 1
in hand will reflect in its adoption the
highest expediency on the part of this
convention.
Sovereignty.
The first thought to which I call your
attention is the most comprehensive of
all that enter Into the complex notion
OF government mean that of
sovereignty. One of the most acute
foreign writers that ever philosophical
on American institutions, De Tocque-
vile, says, Vol. l, page SO of his De-
mocracy of America, Whenever the
political laws of the United States are
to be discussed, it is with the doctrine
of the sovereignty Of the people that
we must begin" Beginning with that
doctrine, we inquire what sovereignty
means. In an organized governmental
form, whether that of monarchy, ar1S-
tocracy or democracy, it means the
supreme power of the state" In our
country, as he basis of our govern
ment, sovereignty lies in the whole
population, the entire citizenship of the
country. Says Jameson, in his excel
lent work on constitutional conven-
tions, page 26, having previously dis
cussed the question of sovereignty, In
the general discussion of sovereignty,
in the preceding sections, that power
has been supposed to reside in the body
polite, comprising the whole popula-
ton Of the commonwealth, without dis
tinction of age or sex" Says Pomeroy,
in his Constitutional Law, page 5, "The
sovereign power consists in the collec-
tive will and in the faculty of welding
and disposing those forces which obey
that will" The constitution of the
United States begins its preamble with
these words, 1--WE the People" All
other constitutions of the American
union plant themselves upon the same
conception, either in the same words,
or in words expressing the same mean
ing. They all assume that the supreme
power resides primarily in those human
souls into which the Creator has
breathed the breath of immortal life.
But what is meant by ''the people," to
which all these definitions and conSti-
tutions point? We know of no higher
authority than Professor Franklin H.
Giddings, perhaps the foremost writer
in the United States on sociology. He
saws in his work on 1.-The Theory of
Sociology" page %, How is it with
the theory of the state? Political sci
ence finds it's premises in the facts of
human nature. The motive forces of
political life, as also of economic life,
are the desires of men, but under an
other aspect. They are desires no longer
individual merely; and no longer a
come for the most part in material
forms. No, they are desires massed
and generalized; desires felt stimuli
taneously and continuously by thou
sands, or even by millions Of men, who
are by themselves simultaneously
moved to concerted action. They are
desires of what we may call the social
mind in distinction from the individual
mind; and they are chiefly for such
things as national power and rerown,
or conditions OF liberty and peace.
Transmitted into will they become
sovereignty, the obedience compelling
power of the state" Society is an or
ganism; and recent writers coming in
even later than Spencer, the most
notable, perhaps, Professor Lester F.
Ward, in "Pshychlc Factors of Civil
ization,'' all teach that the central
force of society is the social conscious
ness, will and intellect. There is a So
cial mind independent of any individual
mind; and it is this social mind that
constitutes public opinion, popular SEN
timent and national sovereignty. This
social mind writes its will in statutes,
laws and constitutions; but when the
social mind changes, as it does from
age to age, the laws grow obsolete, the
constitutions are framed anew, or aban-
doned; and the forms Of government