Excerpt from Argument Made Before the Committee on the Condition of Affairs of Arkansas In their corporate character the people can change their organic law in such parts as to them may seem meet, so long as they do nothing inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, and so long as they themselves observe the mode agreed upon when they organized themselves into a body-politic. If this mode be strictly adhered to, the political State and its legal entity, are preserved; but the moment a change is made by a departure from the corporate powers, or in a manner unknown to the organic act, you have destroyed the corporate existence of a State, and cut out the line of succession. The will of the corporate body is no longer heard. Its sovereignty no longer exists; and instead of one voice speaking for the whole, the voice of the State is distributed, not to the departments of government, but to an unorganized mob, who have withdrawn their allegiance from the State. Such action is nothing more nor less than revolution, and before entering upon it its consequences should be weighed against the evils which it is proposed to remedy. There are but two methods by which a written constitution can be changed: one is the method agreed upon at the time of its adoption, the other is revolution. The general assembly is clothed with power to propose amendments to the constitution, and if the people ratify the proposed amendments they become a part of the organic act. Instead of pursuing this method the general assembly has attempted to create a body foreign and unknown to our form of government, and clothe it with power, not to amend the constitution, but to erect a new government, founded on the allegiance of the same persons that owe allegiance to the government formed by the constitution of 1868. No one of the revolutionists, or friends of the new-constitution movement, pretend to be the successors of the government organized in 1808; they base their right on the power of the people to make and unmake their government at will, regardless of all constitutional inhibition. They claim to possess the right to withdraw their allegiance from one form of government and transfer it to another, of their own creation, at pleasure. They claim that they are not bound to show any line of succession, and that the people possess the inherent power to make governments. Whether a State of the Union can be wrenched from its orbit, and another form of government created to exercise jurisdiction over the same territory, without the consent or assent of Congress, and in a manner unknown to fundamental law, is a question that the Congress of the United States is called upon for the first time to determine. We say that a State government is not an ephemeral thing; that a State government once formed continues and is binding on the people for all time, unless changed as therein prescribed, and that the causes which would justify revolution are the only causes that would absolve the people from a departure from the strict letter of the constitution. This idea of legitimacy and succession cannot be lost sight of, nor can the precedents be departed from. It was not out of compassion to an exiled Bourbon that Europe consumed one whole generation in blood and carnage. The struggle was, not to place a Bourbon on the throne because he was a Bourbon, but to sustain their ideas of legitimacy, and the line of succession; and, in the struggle now being made, every State in the Union will be affected by the precedent set in the Arkansas case. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com