aware that, on the 4th of May, 1842, any great seal was thrown into Providence River!  But James abdicated, and King William took the government; and how did he proceed?  Why, he at once requested all who had been members of the old Parliament, of any regular Parliament in the time of Charles the Second, to assemble.  The Peers, being a standing body, could of course assemble; and all they did was to recommend the calling of a convention, to be chosen by the same electors, and composed of the same numbers, as composed a Parliament.  The convention assembled, and, as all know, was turned into a Parliament.  This was a case of necessity, a revolution.  Don’t we call it so?  And why?  Not merely because a new sovereign then ascended the throne of the Stuarts, but because there was a change in the organization of the government.  The legal and established succession was broken.  The convention did not assemble under any preceding law.  There was a hiatus, a syncope, in the action of the body politic.  This was revolution, and the Parliaments that assembled afterwards referred their legal origin to that revolution.

Is it not obvious enough, that men cannot get together and count themselves, and say they are so many hundreds and so many thousands, and judge of their own qualifications, and call themselves the people, and set up a government?  Why, another set of men, forty miles off, on the same day, with the same propriety, with as good qualifications, and in as large numbers, may meet and set up another government; one may meet at Newport and another at Chepachet, and both may call themselves the people.  What is this but anarchy?  What liberty is there here, but a tumultuary, tempestuous, violent, stormy liberty, a sort of South American liberty, without power except in its spasms, a liberty supported by arms to-day, crushed by arms to-morrow?  Is that our liberty?

The regular action of popular power, on the other hand, places upon public liberty the most beautiful face that ever adorned that angel form.  All is regular and harmonious in its features, and gentle in its operation.  The stream of public authority, under American liberty, running in this channel, has the strength of the Missouri, while its waters are as transparent as those of a crystal lake.  It is powerful for good.  It produces no tumult, no violence, and no wrong;—­

    “Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
    Strong, without rage; without o’erflowing, full.”

Another American principle growing out of this, and just as important and well settled as is the truth that the people are the source of power, is, that, when in the course of events it becomes necessary to ascertain the will of the people on a new exigency, or a new state of things or of opinion, the legislative power provides for that ascertainment by an ordinary act of legislation.  Has not that been our whole history?  It would take me from now till the sun