The most eminent advocate of this principle, whom Tocqueville has called the most powerful apostle that Democracy ever had, was Jefferson. One or two sentences taken from his writings will furnish the most forcible illustration of the contrasts which then existed together, and whose struggles for supremacy were to occupy the history and decide the fate of the American Constitution. Jefferson says that "his object was to restrain the administration to Republican forms and principles, and not permit the Constitution to be construed into a monarchy, and to be warped, in practice, into all the principles and pollutions of their favourite English model. Every people may establish what form of government they please; the will of the nation being the only thing essential. I subscribe to the principle that the will of the majority, honestly expressed, should give law. I suppose it to be self-evident that the earth belongs to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights in it. No society can make a perpetual Constitution or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. Every Constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of thirty-four years." Between this revolutionary doctrine and the ideas derived from England, there was an irreconcilable antagonism. It was intolerable to Jefferson that the engagements of one generation should bind another, that any rights should be deemed too sacred to be confiscated by the vote of a majority. He desired law to be in a constant state of fluctuation, and every change to realise more and more the momentary wishes of the people. No man, therefore, and no interest would enjoy any security against popular feeling, and men would be compelled to struggle permanently not only for influence, but for safety.
Yet Jefferson himself was one of those who despaired of the Union. When the great controversy of the extension of slavery first arose, he wrote to a private friend: "I consider it at once the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line coinciding
