ABSTRACT
The age in which people live is an age of theoretical, and, to a great extent, of practical anarchy. Its ideas and movements are marked by impatience of restraint, denial of law, and contempt of authority. The doctrine, undoubtedly, does assert the sacredness, inviolability, and legitimacy of every actual political constitution, whatever its form, and that the monarchical or aristocratic order, where it is the established order, is as legitimate as the democratic. In fact, democratic politicians never attain to the conception of liberty. The basis of their theory of government is despotism. They make the right to govern a natural right, and differ from the confessedly despotic politicians only in claiming for every man what these claim for only one. The sovereignty of the people is not a truth. Sovereignty is that which is highest, ultimate; which has not only the physical force to make itself obeyed, but the moral right to command whatever it pleases.
