Not its
legality but its wisdom is to be questioned, together with the
false and dangerous theories of government which dictated it.
There is no compact or mutual stipulation between the state and
the government. The state, under God, is sovereign, and ordains
and establishes the government, instead of making a contract, a
bargain, or covenant, with it. The common democratic doctrine on
this point is right, if by people is understood the organic
people attached to a sovereign domain, not the people as
individuals or as a floating or nomadic multitude. By people in
the political sense, Cicero, and St. Augustine after him,
understood the people as the republic, organized in reference to
the common or public good. With this understanding, the
sovereignty persists in the people, and they retain the supreme
authority over the government. The powers delegated are still
the powers of the sovereign delegating them, and may be modified,
altered, or revoked, as the sovereign judges proper. The nation
does not, and cannot abdicate or delegate away its own
sovereignty, for sovereign it is, and cannot but be, so long as
it remains a nation not subjected to another nation.
By the imperial constitution of the French government, the
imperial power is vested in Napoleon III., and made hereditary in
his family, in the male line of his legitimate descendants.
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