Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/346

 claim, or exercise. Take, for illustration, what is called the "guaranty section" of the constitution, which, among other things, provides that, "the United States shall guarantee to each State in this Union a republican form of government; and protect each of them, on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence." Congress, of course, as the representative of the United States, in their legislative capacity, has the right to make laws to carry these guaranties into execution. This involves the right, in reference to the first, to determine what form of government is republican. To decide this important question, the government of the United States and the several State governments, at the time the constitution of the United States was adopted and the States became members of the federal Union, furnished a plain and safe standard, as they were, of course, all deemed republican. But suppose Congress, instead of being regulated by it, should undertake to fix a standard, without regard to that fixed by those who framed, or those who adopted the constitution of the United States; and suppose it should adopt, what now, it is to be feared, is the sentiment of the dominant portion of the Union, that no government is republican where universal suffrage does not prevail — where the numerical majority of the whole population is not recognized as the supreme governing power: And, suppose, acting on this false standard, that Congress should declare that the governments of certain States of the Union, a large portion of