s or parcel sovereigns,
but as subjects of the state, acting, for certain definite purposes, and
within certain prescribed limits, as agents of the sovereign power.

So with all other political powers exercised in the nation--whether
legislative, judicial, or executive; whether exercised by individuals or
by constituted bodies: all stand in the will of the sovereign power; all
are derived and delegated powers--ministerial, and not imperial.

* * * * *

It is easy now to see the pernicious influence which your doctrine about
the sovereign rights of individuals must have upon the unreflecting
masses who accept it as sound sense, and particularly upon those of them
who vote at the primary elections.

In the first place, it generates a false and practically mischievous
notion of their relation to the other constituted authorities of the
state. You are yourself an example in point.

You ask whether it is a mistake or an exaggeration in you to 'say that
presidents, and governors, and all the departments of State or Federal
machinery, are all subordinate to the people?'

It is certainly neither a mistake nor an exaggeration to say so,
provided by the people you understand the whole people, in their
sovereign capacity as one body politic. But it is an egregious mistake,
an absurd and mischievous falsehood, to say so, if by the people be
understood those who vote in the primary elections--whether the
concurring majority of them or all of them. The people who vote are not
_the_ sovereign people. In their capacity of voters they are--in common
with all the other functionaries of the Government--cooerdinate parts of
the indivisible organism of the State. The legislative, judicial, and
executive functionaries of the Government--constituted directly or
indirectly through the ministerial agency of their votes--when thus
constituted, hold their powers not _from_ the voters, but _through_ them
_from_ the sovereign; and to that sovereign alone are they responsible
for the exercise of them. They are, therefore, not 'subordinate' to the
voters, either in the sense of deriving their powers from them, or in
the sense of being accountable to them, and there is no other sense of
the term that is not futile here. They are subordinate in both these
respects to the sovereign power of the nation; but so, too, are the
voters themselves; and the former no more than the latter.

But those who accept your instruct