Daily Ohio Statesman

The Government has no Power to Transcend the Constitution.

In this country, the people alone are absolutely sovereign. They have bound and limited their rulers or public servants by written constitutions, and said to them with an imperative, omnipotent voice: Hitherto may you come, but no farther.

The Union-Government which the people of these States have created, is sovereign within its constitutional sphere, but has no absolute sovereignty. It cannot transcend the powers of absolute sovereignty which the people have granted by the Constitution; for that is an act of absolute sovereignty which the people have reserved to themselves, and which would have remained in them without such reservation.

When, therefore, our rulers usurp this sovereign power by transcending the limits of the Constitution, they are, to that extent, in rebellion against the Union, and if no other remedy remains, the people have the right to resume the delegated powers and oust the usurping delegates by revolution.

It is said that in times of rebellion and great public peril, it may become necessary for the Government to exercise powers not granted by the Constitution, in order to save it. This makes our rulers for the time being the sole judges, whether an exigency has arisen justifying the exercise of that absolute sovereignty, which is lodged in the people alone. If they may resort to it at one time, they may at another. Its usurpation is a stride toward despotism; it is in truth, so far as the usurpation goes, nothing but pure despotism.

It is not for the servants of the people, chosen for the exercise of powers and the performance of duties prescribed by the Constitution, to determine whether a crisis has arisen in public affairs, when they may transcend those powers or neglect those duties. It is for the whole people of the Union to decide whether, in case of a formidable rebellion, or any other great public calamity, they will change the Constitution according to the terms prescribed in it for its own amendment, or whether they will lay it on the shelf for the time being, and resort to measures equivalent to a revolution, in order to save the Union and perpetuate our free institutions.

We believe it is in the power of the people of this Union to put down the present rebellion and save themselves from either anarchy or despotism, without resorting to the process of revolutionizing the administration of the Federal Government, otherwise than is authorized by the Constitution. An amendment to that instrument may or may not become necessary. That will be determined by future events.

The mass of the people, whatever demagogues may assert to the contrary, are for preserving the Constitution and the Union, in all their original excellence and purity, alike from the insidious sappings of professed friends and the violent assaults of open and declared enemies.

It is time for the people to speak out in tones that shall be heard, understood and obeyed. Demagogues, at the North and South, have, mainly for their own private and selfish ends, involved the country in a ruinous, civil war.

Let the people rebuke these selfish, unprincipled leaders, and require that the Government of the United States shall be administered, according to the Federal Constitution: that the Government of each State shall be administered according to the Federal and its own State Constitution, and that obedience to constitutional law, whether State or National, shall, in all cases and under all circumstances, be enforced.