monarchy in the world, which makes the Crown the only source of authority, and makes the judiciary agents of the court. It is the boast of modern civilisation to have undone this system and to have substituted for it that which experience proves to be most favourable to justice. But the absolutists of Democracy and monarchy rank their principles of government at a higher value than the purposes of society and civilisation, and create an idol to which they are ready to sacrifice the safeguards of property, the protection of virtue, and the sanctity of private life. All governments in which one principle dominates, degenerate by its exaggeration. The unity of monarchy gravitates towards the despotism of a single will. Aristocracy which is governed by a minority, inclines to restrict that minority into an oligarchy. In pure Democracies the same course is followed, and the dominion of majority asserts itself more and more extensively and irresistibly. We understand liberty to consist in exemption from control. In America it has come to mean the right to exercise control.
In order to describe the encroachment of this illiberal and tyrannical principle, it would be necessary to pass in review the entire history of the last seventy years. I can only illustrate my meaning by the language which eminent Americans themselves have used. The President Madison wrote: "When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. If a majority be united by common interests, the rights of the minority will be insecure." Justice Story says that the people must be reminded of the fundamental truth in a republican government, "that the minority have indisputable and inalienable rights; that the majority are not everything and the minority nothing; that the people may not do what they please." Channing says: "The doctrine that the majority ought to govern passes with the multitude as an intuition, and they have never thought how far it is to be modified in practice, and how far the application of it
