In thus tracing our institutions to their origin and pursuing them in their progress and modifications down to the adoption of this Constitution two important facts have been disclosed, on which it may not be improper in this stage to make a few observations.  The first is that in wresting the power, or what is called the sovereignty, from the Crown it passed directly to the people.  The second, that it passed directly to the people of each colony and not to the people of all the colonies in the aggregate; to thirteen distinct communities and not to one.  To these two facts, each contributing its equal proportion, I am inclined to think that we are in an eminent degree indebted for the success of our Revolution.  By passing to the people it vested in a community every individual of which had equal rights and a common interest.  There was no family dethroned among us, no banished pretender in a foreign country looking back to his connections and adherents here in the hope of a recall; no order of nobility whose hereditary rights in the Government had been violated; no hierarchy which had been degraded and oppressed.  There was but one order, that of the people, by whom everything was gained by the change.  I mention it also as a circumstance of peculiar felicity that the great body of the people had been born and educated under these equal and original institutions.  Their habits, their principles, and their prejudices were therefore all on the side of the Revolution and of free republican government.

Had distinct orders existed, our fortune might and probably would have been different.  It would scarcely have been possible to have united so completely the whole force of the country against a common enemy.  A contest would probably have arisen in the outset between the orders for the control.  Had the aristocracy prevailed, the people would have been heartless.  Had the people prevailed, the nobility would probably have left the country, or, remaining behind, internal divisions would have taken place in every State and a civil war broken out more destructive even than the foreign, which might have defeated the whole movement.  Ancient and modern history is replete with examples proceeding from conflicts between distinct orders, of revolutions attempted which proved abortive, of republics which have terminated in despotism.  It is owing to the simplicity of the elements of which our system is composed that the attraction of all the parts has been to a common center, that every change has tended to cement the union, and, in short, that we have been blessed with such glorious and happy success.