ions are not likely so to understand
this. They are not likely to be wiser than their teachers, and cannot
perhaps be so safely trusted with the dangerous edge tools of false
doctrine. You tell them that all Government officials, in all
departments, are subordinate to the sovereign people; and they are sure
to understand it that they, the voters, are the sovereign people, and
that all the constituted authorities are subordinate to them in point
of power--hold their powers from them alone, and are responsible to them
alone--while they themselves hold their powers from themselves, and are
responsible only to themselves. Hence (and you yourself have in this
speech set them the example) we hear them talking of themselves as the
'masters,' and Government officials as their 'servants,' just as though
both alike were not servants of one and the same sovereign master, whose
right and power it is--within the sphere of the state, and for the just
ends of the state--to control every individual in the nation. There is a
world of mischief in the use of such words among the ignorant and
unreflecting, and demagogues well know how to avail themselves of the
power it gives them.

The pernicious tendency of your doctrine about the sovereign power and
sovereign rights of individuals is seen in another and more general
point of view.

Political sovereignty--residing, as we have seen it does, in the whole
people as the state, or as one body politic--is not an absolute
sovereignty. It is limited to the just ends of the state--the
maintenance of social justice and the general security and welfare.
There is no sovereignty to do wrong. The state is so far a moral person
that its sovereignty cannot rightfully be exercised from mere will,
arbitrary caprice, or passion; but only dutifully, in just ways, and for
its proper ends.

But the people whom you teach to consider as themselves individually
possessed of a portion of the sovereign power, and (as they will think)
so far sovereigns, have mostly no other idea of sovereignty than the
absolute right to have their own will and way in any way. Regarding
their political rights as their own, inherent, personal possession and
property, and not as public trusts, they are not likely to feel
themselves limited in the manner of exercising them by any sense of duty
to the state. The stronger this false notion of rights, the feebler the
sense of moral obligation in the exercise of them. Woe to the people