View of the Constitution of the United States. St. George Tucker

resolution of the people, in the first of these periodical assemblies, in the year 1712, was to abolish them forever. The profound secrecy with which the magistrates prepared their proposals to the citizens on that subject, and the sudden manner in which the latter, when assembled, were acquainted with it, and made to give their votes upon it; and the consternation of the people when the result was proclaimed has confirmed many in the opinion that some unfair means were used. The whole transaction has been kept secret to this day: but the common opinion is, that the magistrates had privately instructed the secretaries in whose ear the citizens were to whisper their suffrages; when a citizen said “approbation,” he was to be considered as approving the proposal of the magistrates; when he said “rejection,” it was to be considered that he meant to reject the periodical assemblies. … In the year 1738 the citizens enacted at once into laws a small code of forty-four articles, by one single line of which they bound themselves forever to elect the four syndicts, or chiefs of the council of twenty-five out of the members of the same council; whereas they were before free in their choice. They, at that time, suffered the word approved to be slipped into a law; the consequence of which was to render the magistrates absolute masters of the legislature. So watchful, so active, so preserving, so noxious, so incompatible with the principles of a democratic government, are those of aristocracy, that we may venture to pronounce it the most dangerous enemy to a free government. If a single germ of aristocracy, be once ingrafted upon a republican government, the stock will soon cease to bear any other branches. In an aristocracy, says Montesquieu, the republic is in the body of the nobles; and the people are nothing at all.

      SECTION IX.

      Monarchy is that form of government in which all the parts of the supreme power are committed to one person. And such a government may be either despotic, absolute, and unlimited; or limited. In the former case the administration is vested altogether in the prince, without any check, or restriction whatsoever. In this government, according to Montesquieu, the prince is all in all. The people were all equal, and their equality is the most abject slavery. The principle of this kind of government is fear generated in ignorance. Submission constitutes the only security, which the people enjoy: and the safety of the tyrant is alike the result of their terrors, and their ignorance.

      In this government the will of the prince is the only law, manners and customs, says Montesquieu, supply the place of general laws, and the will of the prince constitutes the law in particular cases. Hence in a despotic government there are no laws which can be properly so called: laws are established; manners are inspired; these proceed from a general spirit, those, from a particular institution. It is a capital maxim, that the manners and customs of a despotic empire should never be changed; for nothing would more speedily produce a revolution.

      In China, the fundamental laws of the empire are spoken of; the emperor presumes not to change them; but on particular occasions he dispenses with them. They are binding upon all the world but himself; and so far binding even upon him, that he leaves them to his successor, to dispense with, as he had done before him.

      A limited monarchy (if indeed such a form of government can be anywhere found) is one where by some original laws in the very constitution or conveyance of power, the quantity of it is determined, and limits set to it, with reservations of certain public rights of the people, not entrusted to the prince; and yet no court or council, constituted which does not derive its power from him. How far the government established over the Israelites in the person of Saul … when Samuel their prophet “told the people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book and laid it up before the Lord,” may have furnished a model for this species of monarchy, is foreign from our present inquiry.

      Baron Montesquieu distinguishes that species of monarchy in which there are intermediate, subordinate, and dependent powers, likewise, from the absolute or despotic kind, above-mentioned; yet he acknowledges that even in this, the prince, is the source of all power, civil and political, but that he governs by fundamental laws. “And these,” says he, “necessarily suppose the intermediate channels through which the power flows. The most natural, intermediate, and subordinate power is that of the nobility. No nobility, no monarch; but there may be a despotic prince.”

      But I incline to refer this latter form of government to the class of mixed governments, rather than to the simple monarchical form. It partakes, however, of both; wherever the prince alone is the source of all power, the government is really absolute, in spite of forms. Though the establishment of different ranks, and orders may vary the condition of the people, whereby the burdens of government are unequally borne, yet this does not alter the nature of the government, unless there be some certain powers annexed to those different ranks, or some of them, which may on certain occasions control or check the administration of the monarch. Where no such incidental powers exist, the government is still absolute in the person of the prince: and wherever they do exist, their existence constitutes a mixed government. In Spain, since the suppression of the cortes, the monarchy is absolute; yet there is in Spain a splendid nobility, whose condition is far above the rest of the people, but who, possess no power in respect to the operations of the government. In France, before the late revolution; in Russia, in Prussia, and in Sweden under the government of its late monarch, this was also the case. In all these countries the prince is supposed to govern by fixed laws; yet in all of them, I apprehend he was absolute. In England, the nobility form a separate branch of the supreme legislature; the power of the crown is according to the theory of that government, limited thereby; and this constitutes the English government, what is ordinarily styled, a limited monarchy, but more properly a mixed government. Baron Montesquieu, at the same moment that he is speaking of that species of monarchy in which there are intermediate, subordinate, and dependent powers, subjoins; “that the prince is the source of all power political and civil.” I am at a loss to conceive how the power of such a prince can be said to be limited. He considers indeed the ecclesiastical power in Spain and Portugal, as forming a carrier against the torrent of arbitrary power in those countries: but the ecclesiastical power can scarcely be considered as a dependent power on the crown in either of these kingdoms. It for a long time maintained a superiority over the civil power, in those, and most other countries in Europe; and even at this day, it might hazard a revolution in either of those two kingdoms, if the monarch should attempt to treat it as a subordinate, dependent power.

      It must, however, be confessed, that there is a wide difference between those governments, where liberty hath never been known to exist, or has been long banished, as in Turkey, and in most of the Asiatic, and African states, and those, where absolute authority hath been acquired by gradual usurpations, or violent exertions, made at particular epochs, to suppress those branches of the government, which, in mixed governments, are stripped to form some check upon the supreme executive authority, as was the case in the suppression of the cortes, or assembly of the nobles, in Spain, by Charles V. Of the states general, and provincial parliaments, in France, by Louis XIII. And of the diet of the States, and the senate of Sweden, by the late king Gustavus III. In these last cases, the laws relating to property being previously established, and the privileges of the several orders and ranks of persons, understood, and admitted by general custom, and implied consent, the assumption of power by the prince, was directed to the abolition of public, rather than private rights. In such states, the business of legislation is ordinarily confined to a single subject, that of revenue. The ancient laws on all other subjects remaining unaltered, the people seem to possess some rights: whereas in the Turkish and Asiatic governments, the subject is held to be the slave of the sovereign and his property is held at his master’s will. In the European monarchies, on the other hand, the higher orders, or nobility often, posses very extensive powers over the commonalty, or peasantry, as they are frequently styled, without interfering with, or in any manner diminishing the authority of the government over either; but, on the contrary, strengthening and supporting it on every occasion, where its oppressions might incline the people to resistance, if they possessed the means of making it. And this may serve to explain the maxim, “no nobility, no monarch.” The foundations of this species of monarchy are to be sought for, in the ancient feudal governments, the prince having by degrees usurped, and annihilated all those privileges which might possibly interfere with his own authority; yet leaving the nobility in possession of such as might enable them to maintain a superiority over the people, without danger to the throne. Such was the state of France under Louis XIV, and his successors.