Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/411

 United States, without taking into consideration those of the several States — that the individual governments of each, as well as the united government of all, should assume and preserve the constitutional, instead of the absolute form of popular government — that of the concurrent, instead of the numerical majority.

It is much more difficult to give to the government of the States, this constitutional form, than to the government of the United States; for the same reason that it is more easy to form a constitutional government for a community divided into classes or orders, than for one purely popular. Artificial distinctions of every description, be they of States or Estates, are more simple and strongly marked than the numerous and blended natural distinctions of a community purely popular. But difficult as it is to form such constitutional governments for the separate States, it may be affected by making the several departments, as far as it may be necessary, the organs of the more strongly marked interests of the State, from whatever causes they may have been produced — and by such other devices, whereby the sense of the State may be taken by its parts, and not as a whole — by the concurrent, and not by the numerical majority. It is only by the former that it can be truly taken. Indeed, the numerical majority often fails to accomplish that at which it professes to aim — to take truly the sense of the majority. It assumes, that by assigning to every part of the State a representative in every department of its government, in