Book Description

Excerpt from The Story of the Constitution of the United States Whatever may be the form of government, in the last analysis the people are the sovereigns, and the exercise of sovereignty goes with a majority of the military power. For if there is an absolute or hereditary ruler, he is so because a majority of the people, or a majority of the arms-bearers, have chosen that he shall be, or because they submit to his continuance. Whenever thev are agreed to have it otherwise, his reign comes to an end, no matter if his empire and his prescriptive rights be a thousand years old. They may execute him, as they executed Charles I and Louis XVI or they may simply depose him as they deposed Dom Pedro II of Brazil. They may or may not be wise in doing this, and may or may not be fortunate m their new government; but the sovereignty resides in them, and they have ex ercised it. When they have enthroned a king, he may call himself a sovereign, and speak of them as his subj ects - and in theory they are such - but in fact he is their servant, and if the service is bad they will not accept it forever. If they prescribe limits to his powers, that prescription of limits, as far as it goes, is a constitution. It is common to speak of his giving them a constitution, but instead it is they that give one to him, for it is only by their sufierance that he is on the throne at all, and usually it is be cause he has been made to realize this that he gra ciously grants the people a constitution. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.