ched to a sovereign domain; and the
people who organize under a plebiscitum are not, till organized and
admitted into the Union, an organic or a political people at all. When
Louis Napoleon made his appeal to a vote of the French people, he made
an appeal to a people existing as a sovereign people, and a sovereign
people without a legal government. In his case the plebiscitum was
proper and sufficient, even if it be conceded that it was through his
own fault that France at the moment was found without a legal
government. When a thing is done, though wrongly done, you cannot act
as if it were not done, but must accept it as a fact and act
accordingly.

The plebiscitum, which is simply an appeal to the people outside of
government, is not valid when the government has not lapsed, either by
its usurpations or by its dissolution, nor is it valid either in the
case of a province, or of a population that has no organic existence as
an independent sovereign state. The plebiscitum in France was valid,
but in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchies of Modena, Parma, and
Lucca, and in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies it was not valid, for
their legal governments had not lapsed; nor was it valid in the
Aemilian provinces of the Papal States, because they were not a nation
or a sovereign people, but only a portion of such nation or people. In
the case of the states and provinces--except Lombardy, ceded to France
by Austria, and sold to the Sardinian king--annexed to Piedmont to form
the new kingdom of Italy, the plebiscitum was invalid, because implying
the right of the people to rebel against the legal authority, and to
break the unity and individuality of the state of which they form an
integral part. The nation is a whole, and no part has the right to
secede or separate, and set up a government for itself, or annex itself
to another state, without the consent of the whole. The solidarity of
the nation is both a fact and a law. The secessionists from the United
States defended their action only on the ground that the States of the
American Union are severally independent sovereign states, and they
only obeyed the authority of their respective states.

The plebiscitum, or irregular appeal to what is called universal
suffrage, since adopted by Louis Napoleon in France after the coup
d'etat, is becoming not a little menacing to the stability of
governments and the rights and integrity of states, and is not less
dangerous to t