tion as favorable to humanity and justice | as the frenzy of the Administration will allow. Utterly opposed to the grounds upon which this war has been waged, and condemning the usurpation of authority, by which the President commenced it, he, nevertheless, did not scruple to vote, with the great body of the Whigs in Congress, the first supplies of men and money, which seemed to be indispensable to the reinforcement of General Taylor at that moment of supposed exigency, of which the Administration took such artful advantage. He has been consistently, ever since, an earnest advocate for peace on terms compatible with the honor and justice of a magnanimous and Christian people.

The same moderation of opinion which appears in this speech, in regard to the great and exciting subjects there referred to, is consistently preserved by Mr. Winthrop upon other topics which have agitated the public. A sincere friend of the Constitution, and earnestly desirous to maintain the harmony of the Union, he has conscientiously, we may say, refrained from those ultra views on the subject of slavery, either in the Northern or Southern aspect of the question, which have so unhappily and so unprofitably distracted some sections of the country. Liberal and tolerant upon that subject, he has firmly maintained his own opinion against those on either side, who we may hope will acknowledge, in their calmer reflections, the wisdom and justice of his moderation.

The recent election of this gentleman to the honorable post he now fills in the House of Representatives, is an expressive token of the good opinion he has won on that theatre where his talents have been most profitably exerted for the benefit of the country. No member of that House might better deserve this distinction. His integrity as a man, his accomplishments as a statesman, and his fidelity as a Whig, render the choice of the House an honor both to the giver and receiver; while his parliamentary skill in the appropriate functions of his office enable him to requite the favor he has received, by the usefulness of

his service.

His address to the House, on the recent occasion of taking the chair, exhibits a just appreciation of the duties committed to

and affords an example of graceful

dignity of style which may be commended
It is
to the imitation of his successors.
worthy of being preserved, and we there-
fore submit it to the judgment of our read-
ers :-

"Gentlemen of the House of Representatives of the United States:

"I am deeply sensible of the honor which you have conferred upon me by the vote which has just been announced, and I pray leave to express my most grateful acknowledgments to those who have thought me worthy of so distinguished a mark of their confidence.

When I remember by whom this chair has been filled in other years, and, still more, when I reflect on the constitutional character of the body before me, I cannot but feel that you have assigned me a position worthy of any man's ambition, and far above the rightful reach of

my own.

66

"I approach the discharge of its duties with a profound impression at once of their dignity and of their difficulty.

"Seven years of service as a member of this branch of the National Legislature have more than sufficed to teach me that this is no place of mere formal routine or ceremonious repose. Severe labors, perplexing cares, trying responsibilities, await any one who is called to it, even under the most auspicious and favorable circumstances. How, then, can I help trembling at the task which you have imposed on me, in the existing condition of this House and of the country?

"In a time of war, in a time of high political excitement, in a time of momentous nations! controversy, I see before me the Representatives of the People almost equally divided, not merely, as the votes of this morning have already indicated, in their preference for persons. but in opinion and in principle, on many of the most important questions on which they have

assembled to deliberate.

"May I not reasonably claim, in advance, from you all, something more than an ordinary measure of forbearance and indulgence, for whatever of inability I may manifest, in meeting the exigencies and embarrassments which I cannot hope to escape? And may I not reasonably implore, with something more than common fervency, upon your labors and upon my own, the blessing of that Almighty Power, whose recorded attribute it is, that He maketh men to be of one mind in a house?'

"Let us enter, gentlemen, upon our work c legislation with a solemn sense of our respersibility to God and to our country. However we may be divided on questions of immedia policy, we are united by the closest ties of permanent interest and permanent obligation. W are the Representatives of twenty millions people, bound together by common laws and

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT.*

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

"WE, the People of the United States," says the preamble to the Constitution, “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of

America.

"All legislative powers herein granted, shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."

The object of the Constitution was, then, to establish a government for the whole people. "We, the People," established for ourselves a National government. The States were already established, and maintained a separate existence; but it was necessary that the whole people should be represented, without reference to States; otherwise, there might be an unstable Confederacy, but no Nation-no Union.

A representative government, of which the members have the character of agents for the people, requires that the people be, in some measure, acquainted with the character of their representative agents. It is necessary, for the perfect working of the system, that the voter should be informed, either immediately, or through the general report, of the character of the men for whom he casts his vote. But this end could be attained only by what our author calls "distributive elections;" each district choosing its own representative from among its own citizens. If there were any great names of a reputation extending over the whole Union, they would become the candidates for the higher offices, and might have been elected by a general ticket; but such a course would be impossible for the election of a great crowd of representative agents. Nor would it be a matter of indifference in the result, when the agents of the people

came together in the legislative assembly, whether they were or were not citizens of the districts for which they were chosen. For the Congress is not merely a collection of business agents, assembled about matters of mere pecuniary interest. They bear a character of personal and social, as well as of legal substitutes. Not for the people in the abstract, as one man might represent them, but the people in detail, with all their various interests and feelings; which could only be represented by an assemblage of many men, sent from all parts of the nation, and bearing with them the features and disposition of all the parts. These substitutes were to combine in themselves the characters of free representatives and voluntary defenders of their own particular districts, as well as of legislators for the whole. And this character, all good representatives have invariably borne.

It was not, then, merely to gratify a Democratic tendency, that the Constitution established distributive elections, but to secure a more perfect and real representation. If it were a matter of indifference whether members were elected by a general ticket, or by distributive elections, ther it were a matter of equal indifference whether all came from one district, or one from every district-and whether the number deputed were a thousand, ar hundred, or only ten. Ten men from Georgia might be elected on a general ticket to legislate for the whole Union. were Congress merely legislators for the whole. The Constitution, therefore, in etablishing the present system of elections contemplated not only the superior funetion of the national legislator, as such: but also his inferior and social relation, aa representative of the interests, opinionand even the passions and prejudices the people from amongst whom he come

The chapter to which these remarks are introductory, is taken from an unpublished work upon t ience of the Laws, by H. W. Warner, Esq.

The reader will observe, in the follow- | policy respected, in all measures of admining argument, which we think a conclusive istration. But neither is this the kind of one, that the author has touched very light- sovereignty with which the laws are techly on the inferior member of his subject, nically conversant; being a sovereignty of namely, on the duties and relations of our position and estate, rather than of active national legislators in their merely repre- control; of circumstantial predominance, sentative capacity, but has restricted him- than of exerted authority. self to a development of the scientific idea of a national legislator, elected, indeed, by his district, and yet, under the Constitution, free to act and vote for what seems to him the good of the whole.-Ed.

Let us be more exact. The people's sovereignty under the Constitution is a power in the government as well as over it; a power which the Constitution recognizes and makes use of for its own ends in the established organism of the State, giving it work to do, and in a fixed, unalterable line of action; in short, a strictly

OURS is an agency government, and therefore of the kind denominated free; a government, however, that is in theory as re-functionary power; as much so as the mote from pure democracy on the one hand as from pure monarchy on the other. The fathers called it republican; meaning thereby to give it not simply a description but a name, and for the very purpose of keeping up this double discrimination. It was not intended that the people should manage it themselves; and yet it was intended to place it under a decisive popular influence and control, by having the agents, who were to be its managers, appointed by the general voice of the country for short terms; re-eligible afterwards, indeed, but only upon condition of their being still acceptable to the people, who were to re-appoint or dismiss them at pleasure by a new expression of the same general voice.

power of the President, or of a Judge of the Supreme Court.

It will be well if we discriminate as the fathers did. There is danger that we may not. The subject is too much declaimed upon to leave the lines of exact truth always visible. The people are daily told without reserve, not only that they are sovereigns, but that their sovereignty is unlimited and unqualified. This is true in a vague sense, but to a legal ear it is eminently false.

The thing may be looked at in various lights. In one, the people are above the Constitution itself; for they can pull down the glorious structure if they will, and either rebuild it afterwards, or leave it in ruins. This however is not legal Sovereignty. In another view, the people are above, not the Constitution, but the government organized under it; forasmuch is they are the acknowledged proprietaries f the system, the parties in interest, to whom everything belongs, and whose welare is to be consulted, and their views of

It follows, that this sovereignty, besides being of a qualified nature, is also limited in extent. Nor is the measure of it hard to take; being just what remains, of the whole mass of functionary powers organic to our system, after deducting therefrom the powers devolved upon government agents for the performance of their duties. The result is plain enough. Those devolved powers are all administrative-appertaining to government in the ordinary meaning of the term; that is to say, to the various offices of the legislative, executive, and judicial departments, familiar to every one's knowledge. Such is the subtrahend of our arithmetical problem. What then must the people's remainder be? What but the organizing and visitatorial power of the ballot-boxthe electoral sovereignty?

Nor is this sovereignty original in the people. No functionary power can be older than the organism it belongs to. Much is said about the "reserved rights" of the people, and in a connection to show that rights of power are meant. It is a delusion. How could rights of any sort bearing solely on the government, exist before the government itself? And if they did not pre-exist, how could they be reserved, or kept back, when the government was formed? They necessarily took their date from that period. They were the very creatures of the Constitution. And it was by the Constitution that they were first imparted to the popular electors. The right of voting at political elections is truly what it has been called, a franchise-an