If this vehement invective against majorities meant no more than that, in the construction of government, it is wise to provide checks and balances, so that there should be various limitations on the power of the mere majority, it would only mean what the Constitution of the United States has already abundantly provided.  It is full of such checks and balances.  In its very organization, it adopts a broad and most effective principle in restraint of the power of mere majorities.  A majority of the people elects the House of Representatives, but it does not elect the Senate.  The Senate is elected by the States, each State having, in this respect, an equal power.  No law, therefore, can pass, without the assent of the representatives of the people, and a majority of the representatives of the States also.  A majority of the representatives of the people must concur, and a majority of the States must concur, in every act of Congress; and the President is elected on a plan compounded of both these principles.  But having composed one house of representatives chosen by the people in each State, according to their numbers, and the other of an equal number of members from every State, whether larger or smaller, the Constitution gives to majorities in these houses thus constituted the full and entire power of passing laws, subject always to the constitutional restrictions and to the approval of the President.  To subject them to any other power is clear usurpation.  The majority of one house may be controlled by the majority of the other; and both may be restrained by the President’s negative.  These are checks and balances provided by the Constitution, existing in the government itself, and wisely intended to secure deliberation and caution in legislative proceedings.  But to resist the will of the majority in both houses, thus constitutionally exercised, to insist on the lawfulness of interposition by an extraneous power; to claim the right of defeating the will of Congress, by setting up against it the will of a single State,—­is neither more nor less, as it strikes me, than a plain attempt to overthrow the government.  The constituted authorities of the United States are no longer a government, if they be not masters of their own will; they are no longer a government, if an external power may arrest their proceedings; they are no longer a government, if acts passed by both houses, and approved by the President, may be nullified by State vetoes or State ordinances.  Does any one suppose it could make any difference, as to the binding authority of an act of Congress, and of the duty of a State to respect it, whether it passed by a mere majority of both houses, or by three fourths of each, or the unanimous vote of each?  Within the limits and restrictions of the Constitution, the government of the United States, like all other populpr governments, acts by majorities.  It can act no otherwise.  Whoever, therefore, denounces the government of majorities, denounces the government of his own country, and denounces all free governments.  And whoever would restrain these majorities, while acting within their constitutional limits, by an external power, whatever he may intend, asserts principles which, if adopted, can lead to nothing else than the destruction of the government itself.