The nation is a whole, and no part has the right to secede or
separate, and set up a government for itself, or annex itself to
another state, without the consent of the whole. The solidarity
of the nation is both a fact and a law. The secessionists from
the United States defended their action only on the ground that
the States of the American Union are severally independent
sovereign states, and they only obeyed the authority of their
respective states.
The plebiscitum, or irregular appeal to what is called universal
suffrage, since adopted by Louis Napoleon in France after the
coup d'etat, is becoming not a little menacing to the stability
of governments and the rights and integrity of states, and is not
less dangerous to the peace and order of society than "the
solidarity of peoples" asserted by Kossuth, the revolutionary
ex-governor of Hungary, the last stronghold of feudal barbarism
in Christian Europe; for Russia has emancipated her serfs.
The nation, as sovereign, is free to constitute government
according to its own judgment, under any form it
pleases--monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, or mixed--vest
all power in an hereditary monarch, in a class or hereditary
nobles, in a king and two houses of parliament, one hereditary,
the other elective, or both elective; or it may establish a
single, dual, or triple executive, make all officers of
government hereditary or all elective, and if elective, elective
for a longer or a shorter time, by universal suffrage or a select
body of electors.
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