by the
military power,--unless Congress, in the exercise of its plenary powers,
should undertake to organize the new jurisdiction.

But every revolutionary proceeding is to be avoided. It will be within
the recollection of all familiar with our history, that our fathers,
while regulating the separation of the Colonies from the parent country,
were careful that all should be done according to the forms of law, so
that the thread of _legality_ should continue unbroken. To this end the
Continental Congress interfered by a supervising direction. But the Tory
argument in that day denied the power of Congress as earnestly as it
denies this power now. Mr. Duane, of the Continental Congress, made
himself the mouthpiece of this denial:--

"_Congress ought not to determine a point, of this sort about
instituting government_. What is it to Congress how justice is
administered? You have no right to pass the resolution, any more than
Parliament has. How does it appear that no favorable answer is likely to
be given to our petitions?"[23]

In spite of this argument, the Congress of that day undertook, by formal
resolutions, to indicate the process by which the new governments should
be constituted.[24]

If we seek, for our guidance, the principle which entered into this
proceeding of the Continental Congress, we shall find it in the idea,
that nothing must be left to illegal or informal action, but that all
must be done according to rules of constitution and law previously
ordained. Perhaps this principle has never been more distinctly or
powerfully enunciated than by Mr. Webster, in his speech against the
Dorr Constitution in Rhode Island. According to him, this principle is a
fundamental part of what he calls our American system, requiring that
the right of suffrage shall be prescribed by _previous law_, including
its qualifications, the time and place of its exercise, and the manner
of its exercise; and then again, that the results are to be certified to
the central power by some certain rule, _by some known public officers_,
in some clear and definite form, to the end that two things may be done:
first, that every man entitled to vote may vote; secondly, that his vote
may he sent forward and counted, and so he may exercise his part of
sovereignty, in common with his fellow-citizens. Such, according to Mr.
Webster, are the minute forms which must be followed, if we would impart
to the result the crowning character of law. And h