vereign power to organize
and appoint a new government. When, on the 2d of December, 1851, the
president, by a coup d'etat, suppressed the legislative assembly and
the constitutional government, there was no legitimate government
standing, and the power assumed by the president was unquestionably a
usurpation; but the nation was competent to condone his usurpation and
legalize his power, and by a plebiscitum actually did so. The wisdom
or justice of the coup d'etat is another question, about which men may
differ; but when the French nation, by its subsequent act, had condoned
it, and formally conferred dictatorial powers on the prince-president,
the principal had approved the act of his agent, and given him
discretionary powers, and nothing more was to be said. The imperial
constitution and the election of the president to be emperor, that
followed on December 2d, 1852, were strictly legal, and, whatever men
may think of Napoleon III., it must be conceded that there is no legal
flaw in his title, and that he holds his power by a title as high and
as perfect as there is for any prince or ruler.

But the plebiscitum cannot be legally appealed to or be valid when and
where there is a legal government existing and in the full exercise of
its constitutional functions, as was decided by the Supreme Court of
the United States in a case growing out of what is known as the Dorr
rebellion in Rhode Island. A suffrage committee, having no political
authority, drew up and presented a new constitution of government to
the people, plead a plebiscitum in its favor, and claimed the officers
elected under it as the legally elected officers of the state. The
court refused to recognize the plebiscitum, and decided that it knew
Rhode Island only as represented through the government, which had
never ceased to exist. New States in Territories have been organized
on the strength of a plebiscitum when the legal Territorial government
was in force, and were admitted as States into the Union, which, though
irregular and dangerous, could be done without revolution, because
Congress, that admitted them, is the power to grant the permission to
organize as States and apply for admission. Congress is competent to
condone an offence against its own rights. The real danger of the
practice is, that it tends to create a conviction that sovereignty
inheres in the people individually, or as population, not as the body
politic or organic people atta