article of the Constitution of the United States, Congress, two thirds of both houses concurring, may propose amendments of the Constitution; or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the States, may call a convention; and amendments proposed in either of these forms must be ratified by the legislatures or conventions of three fourths of the States.  The fifth article of the Constitution, if it was made a topic for those who framed the “people’s constitution” of Rhode Island, could only have been a matter of reproach.  It gives no countenance to any of their proceedings, or to any thing like them.  On the contrary, it is one remarkable instance of the enactment and application of that great American principle, that the constitution of government should be cautiously and prudently interfered with, and that changes should not ordinarily be begun and carried through by bare majorities.

But the people limit themselves also in other ways.  They limit themselves in the first exercise of their political rights.  They limit themselves, by all their constitutions, in two important respects; that is to say, in regard to the qualifications of electors, and in regard to the qualifications of the elected.  In every State, and in all the States, the people have precluded themselves from voting for everybody they might wish to vote for; they have limited their own right of choosing.  They have said, We will elect no man who has not such and such qualifications.  We will not vote ourselves, unless we have such and such qualifications.  They have also limited themselves to certain prescribed forms for the conduct of elections.  They must vote at a particular place, at a particular time, and under particular conditions, or not at all.  It is in these modes that we are to ascertain the will of the American people; and our Constitution and laws know no other mode.  We are not to take the will of the people from public meetings, nor from tumultuous assemblies, by which the timid are terrified, the prudent are alarmed, and by which society is disturbed.  These are not American modes of signifying the will of the people, and they never were.  If any thing in the country, not ascertained by a regular vote, by regular returns, and by regular representation, has been established, it is an exception, and not the rule; it is an anomaly which, I believe, can scarcely be found.

It is true that at the Revolution, when all government was immediately dissolved, the people got together, and what did they do?  Did they exercise sovereign power?  They began an inceptive organization, the object of which was to bring together representatives of the people, who should form a government.  This was the mode of proceeding in those States where their legislatures were dissolved.  It was much like that had in England upon the abdication of James the Second.  He ran away, he abdicated.  He threw the great seal into the Thames.  I am not