th certain political functions,
which, in some respects, subjects theoretically the sovereign to his
creature. The emperor confessedly holds his power by the grace of God
and the will of the nation, which is a clear acknowledgment that the
sovereignty vests in the French people as the French state; but the
imperial constitution, which is the constitution of the government, not
of the state, studies, while acknowledging the sovereignty of the
people, to render it nugatory, by transferring it, under various subtle
disguises, to the government, and practically to the emperor as chief
of the government. The senate, the council of state, the legislative
body, and the emperor, are all creatures of the French state, and have
properly no political functions, and to give them such functions is to
place the sovereign under his own subjects! The real aim of the
imperial constitution is to secure despotic power under the guise of
republicanism. It leaves and is intended to leave the nation no way of
practically asserting its sovereignty but by either a revolution or a
plebiscitum, and a plebiscitum is permissible only where there is no
regular government.

The British constitution is consistent with itself, but imposes no
restriction on the power of the government. The French imperial
constitution is illogical, inconsistent with itself as well as with the
free action of the nation. The American constitution has all the
advantages of both, and the disadvantages of neither. The convention
is not the government like the British Parliament, nor a creature of
the state like the French senate, but the sovereign state itself, in a
practical form. By means of the convention the government is
restricted to its delegated powers, and these, if found in practice
either too great or too small, can be enlarged or contracted in a
regular, orderly way, without resorting to a revolution or to a
plebiscitum. Whatever political grievances there may be, there is
always present the sovereign convention competent to redress them. The
efficiency of power is thus secured without danger to liberty, and
freedom without danger to power. The recognition of the convention,
the real political sovereign of the country and its separation from and
independence of the ordinary government, is one of the most striking
features of the American constitution.

The next thing to be noted, after the convention, is the constitution
by the convention of the gove