to lie at
the basis of civil society "that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed."

In our Federal and State Constitutions we have established the institutions
through which these rights are to be secured. We have declared what
officers shall make the laws, what officers shall execute them, what
officers shall sit in judgment upon claims of right under them. We have
prescribed how these officers shall be selected and the tenure by which
they shall hold their offices. We have limited them in the powers which
they are to exercise, and, where it has been deemed necessary, we have
imposed specific duties upon them. The body of rules thus prescribed
constitute the governmental institutions of the United States.

When proposals are made to change these institutions there are certain
general considerations which should be observed.

The first consideration is that free government is impossible except
through prescribed and established governmental institutions, which work
out the ends of government through many separate human agents, each doing
his part in obedience to law. Popular will cannot execute itself directly
except through a mob. Popular will cannot get itself executed through an
irresponsible executive, for that is simple autocracy. An executive
limited only by the direct expression of popular will cannot be held to
responsibility against his will, because, having possession of all the
powers of government, he can prevent any true, free, and general expression
adverse to himself, and unless he yields voluntarily he can be overturned
only by a revolution. The familiar Spanish-American dictatorships are
illustrations of this. A dictator once established by what is or is alleged
to be public choice never permits an expression of public will which will
displace him, and he goes out only through a new revolution because he
alone controls the machinery through which he could be displaced peaceably.
A system with a plebiscite at one end and Louis Napoleon at the other could
not give France free government; and it was only after the humiliation of
defeat in a great war and the horrors of the Commune that the French people
were able to establish a government that would rea