It is a maxim with constitutional statesmen, that "the king reigns, not governs." The people, though sovereign under God, are not the government. The government is in their name and by virtue of authority delegated from God through them, but they are not it, are not their own ministers. It is only when the people forget this and undertake to be their own ministers and to manage their own affairs immediately by themselves instead of selecting agents to do it for them, and holding their agents to a strict account for their management, that they are likely to abuse their power or to sanction injustice. The nation may be misled or deceived for a moment by demagogues, those popular courtiers, but as a rule it is disposed to be just and to respect all natural rights. The wrong is done by individuals who assume to speak in their name, to wield their power, and to be themselves the state. L'etat, c'est moi. I am the state, said Louis XIV. of France, and while that was conceded the French nation could have in its government no more wisdom or virtue than he possessed, or at least no more than he could appreciate. And under his government France was made responsible for many deeds that the nation would never have sanctioned, if it bad been recognized as the depositary of the national sovereignty, or as the French state, and answerable to God for the use it made of political power, or the conduct of its government.
But be this as it may, there evidently can be no physical force in the nation to coerce the nation itself in case it goes wrong, for if the sovereignty vests in the nation, only the nation can rightly command or authorize the employment of force, and all commissions must run in its name. Written constitutions alone will avail little, for they emanate from the people, who can disregard them, if they choose, and alter or revoke them at will. The reliance for the wisdom and justice of the state must after all be on moral guaranties. In the very nature of the case there are and can be no other. But these, placed in a clear light, with an intelligent and religious people, will seldom be found insufficient. Hence the necessity for the protection, not of authority simply or chiefly, but of individual rights and the liberty of religion and intelligence in the nation, of the general understanding that the nation holds its power to govern as a trust from God, and that to God through the people all civil rulers are strictly responsible. Let the mass of the people in any nation lapse into the ignorance and barbarism of atheism, or lose themselves in that supreme sophism called pantheism, the grand error of ancient as well as of modern gentilism, and liberty, social or political, except that wild kind of liberty, and perhaps not even that should be excepted, which obtains among savages, would be lost and irrecoverable.