greatest good to the greatest number and the greatest happiness to the individual. Experience, and especially the growth of popular government in our own history, have shown that in the long run every class of the people, and by that I mean those similarly situated, are better able to secure attention to their own welfare than any other class, however altruistic the latter class may be. Of course this assumes that the members of the class have reasonable intelligence and capacity for knowing their own rights and interest. Hence it follows that the best government, in the sense of the government most certain to provide for and protect the rights and governmental needs of every class, is that one in which every class has a voice. In recognition of this the tendency from earliest times in our history has been the enlargement of the electorate to include in the ultimate source of governmental power as many as possible of those governed. But even to-day the electorate is not more in number than one-sixth of the total number of those who are citizens of the nation and are the people for whom the Government is maintained, and whose rights and happiness the Government is intended to secure. More than this, government by unanimous vote of the electorate is impossible, and therefore the majority of the electorate must rule. We find, therefore, that government by the people is, under our present system, government by a majority of one sixth of those whose rights and happiness are to be affected by the course and conduct of the Government. This is the nearest to a government by the whole people we have ever had. Woman's suffrage will change this, and it is doubtless coming as soon as the electorate can be certain that most women desire it and will assume its burden and responsibility. But, even then, the electorate will be only a one-third part of the whole people. In other words, the electorate is a representative governing body for the whole people for which the Government was established, and the controlling majority of the electorate is a body still less numerous. It is thus apparent that ours is a Government of all the people by a representative part of the people. Now, the object of government is not only to secure the greatest good to the greatest number, but also to do this as near as may be by securing the rights of each individual in his liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness. Hence it was long ago recognized that the direct action of a temporary majority of the existing electorate must be limited by fundamental law; that is, by a constitution intended to protect the individual and the minority of the electorate and the nonvoting majority of the people against the unjust or arbitrary action of the majority of the electorate. This made it necessary to introduce into the Constitution certain declarations as to the rights of the individual which it was the purpose of the whole people to maintain through the Government against the aggression of any temporary majority of the electorate and to provide in the same instrument certain procedure by which the individual might assert and vindicate those rights. Then, to protect against the momentary impulse of a temporary majority of the electorate to change the fundamental law and deprive the individual or the voting minority or the nonvoting majority of inalienable rights, the Constitution provided a number of checks and balances whereby every amendment to the Constitution must be adopted under forms and with delays that are intended to secure much deliberation on the part of the electorate in adopting such amendments. I cannot state the necessity for maintaining the checks and balances in a constitution to secure the guaranty of individual rights and well-ordered liberty better than by quoting from Daniel Webster. He said: The first object of a free people is the preservation of their liberty; and liberty is only to be preserved by maintaining constitutional restraints and just divisions of political power. Nothing is more deceptive or more dangerous than the pretence of a desire to simplify government. The simplest governments are despotism; the next simplest, limited monarchies; but all republics, all governments of law, must impose numerous limitations and qualifications of authority and give many positive and many qualified rights. In other words, they must be subject to rule and regulation. This is the very essence of free political institutions. The spirit of liberty is, indeed, a bold and fearless spirit; but it is also a sharpsighted spirit; it is a cautious, sagacious, discriminating, far-seeing intelligence; it is jealous of encroachment, jealous of power, jealous of man. It demands checks; it seeks for guards; it insists on securities; it intrenches itself behind strong defences, and fortifies itself with all possible care against the assaults of ambition and passion. It does not trust the amiable weaknesses of human nature, and therefore it will not permit power to overstep its prescribed limits, though benevolence, good intent, and patriotic purpose come along with it. Neither does it satisfy itself with flashy and temporary resistance to illegal authority. Far otherwise. It seeks for duration and permanence. It looks before and after; and, building on the experience of ages which are past, it labors diligently for the benefit of ages to come. This is the nature of constitutional liberty; and this is our liberty, if we will rightly understand and preserve it. Every free government is necessarily complicated, because all such governments establish restraints, as well on the power of government itself as on that of individuals. If we will abolish the distinction of branches, and have but one branch; if we will abolish jury trials, and leave it all to the judge; if we will then ordain that the legislator shall himself be that judge; and if we will place the executive power in the same hands, we may readily simplify government. We may easily bring it to the simplest of all possible forms-a pure despotism. But a separation of departments, so far as practical, and the preservation of clear lines of division between them, is the fundamental idea in the creation of all our constitutions; and, doubtless, the continuance of regulated liberty depends on maintaining these boundaries. Mr. Justice Miller, of Iowa, was one of the greatest jurists that ever adorned the Supreme Bench of the United States. Speaking for that great court in the case of Loan Association v. Topeka (20 Wall., 655), in a case presenting the question of the constitutionality of a law imposing a general tax on all citizens to pay for a factory to be run and owned by a private company, after referring to the act as "an invasion of private right," he said: It must be conceded that there are such rights in every free government beyond the control of the State. A government which recognized no such rights, which held the lives, the liberty, and the property of its citizens subject at all times to the absolute disposition and unlimited control of even the most democratic repository of power is, after all, but a despotism. It is true it is a despotism of the many-of the majority, if you choose to call it so. But it is none the less a despotism. It may well be doubted if a man is to hold all that he is accustomed to call his own, all in which he has placed his happiness and the security of which is essential to that happiness, under the unlimited dominion of others, whether it is not wiser that this power should be exercised by one man than by many. The theory of our governments, State and national, is opposed to the deposit of unlimited power anywhere. The executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches of these governments are all of limited and defined powers. There are limitations on such power, which grow out of the essential nature of all free governments-implied reservations of individual rights, without which the social compact could not exist, and which are respected by all governments entitled to the name. To lay with one hand the power of the Government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes, is none the less a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation. This is not legislation. It is a decree under legislative forms. I agree that we are making progress and ought to make progress in the shaping of governmental action to secure greater equality of opportunity, to destroy the undue advantage of special privilege and of accumulated capital, and to remove obstructions to the pursuit of human happiness; and in working out these difficult problems we may possibly have, from time to time, to limit or narrow by amendment the breadth of constitutional guaranties in respect of property and other rights. But, if we do it, let us do it deliberately, understanding what we are doing, and with full consideration and clear weighing of what we are giving up of private right for the general welfare. Let us do it under circumstances which shall make the operation of the change uniform and just, and not depend on the feverish, uncertain, and unstable determination of successive votes on different |