, it must be conceded
that there is no legal flaw in his title, and that he holds his
power by a title as high and as perfect as there is for any
prince or ruler.
But the plebiscitum cannot be legally appealed to or be valid
when and where there is a legal government existing and in the
full exercise of its constitutional functions, as was decided by
the Supreme Court of the United States in a case growing out of
what is known as the Dorr rebellion in Rhode Island. A suffrage
committee, having no political authority, drew up and presented a
new constitution of government to the people, plead a plebiscitum
in its favor, and claimed the officers elected under it as the
legally elected officers of the state. The court refused to
recognize the plebiscitum, and decided that it knew Rhode Island
only as represented through the government, which had never
ceased to exist. New States in Territories have been organized
on the strength of a plebiscitum when the legal Territorial
government was in force, and were admitted as States into the
Union, which, though irregular and dangerous, could be done
without revolution, because Congress, that admitted them, is the
power to grant the permission to organize as States and apply for
admission. Congress is competent to condone an offence against
its own rights. The real danger of the practice is, that it
tends to create a conviction that sovereignty inheres in the
people individually, or as population, not as the body politic or
organic people attached to a sovereign domain; and the people who
organize under a plebiscitum are not, till organized and admitted
into the Union, an organic or a political people at all.
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