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It can be little doubted, that if the state of Rhode Island was separated from the confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the popular form of government within such narrow limits, would be displayed by such reiterated oppression of the factious majorities, that some power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of it."
For the three years immediately preceding his candidacy the Republican majorities in the State had averaged nearly 45,000, while in 1863 Vallandingham had been beaten by 101,699.
The Poles of Galicia, having enjoyed the utmost liberty under Austrian rule, have naturally been almost immune from the discontent so noticeable among their kinsmen in Russia and Prussia, and have indeed for a generation past formed the backbone of all parliamentary majorities in the Austrian Reichsrat.
The first and most important problem, as the white South saw it, was the maintenance of white supremacy which had been gained with so much difficulty. In only three States South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana were there negro majorities. Obviously, if the whites could be induced or coerced to stand together, they could continue to control the governments in eight of the seceding States.
Constitutions, or the fundamental law, the governor went on to say, were meant to be the expression of those just and general principles which should control human society, and as such should prevail over majorities. Constitutions were expressly intended to defend the rights of minorities; since without them, each question, or interest, might be settled by the majority, as it arose.
All the pictures whose height did not reach four feet ten inches were judged there 'passed on the easel, as the expression goes being ranged, ten or twelve together, on a kind of trestle covered with green baize. A good many committee-men then grew absent-minded, several wrote their letters, and the president had to get angry to obtain presentable majorities.
"The argument in favor of these artificial majorities," says Professor Burgess, "is that innovation is too strong an impulse in democratic states, and must be regulated; that the organic law should be changed only after patience, experience and deliberation shall have demonstrated the necessity of the change; and that too great fixedness of the law is better than too great fluctuation.
The bill erroneously declared it established by the acts of 1850 that "all questions as to slavery in the Territories," no less than in the States which should grow out of them, were to be left to the residents, subject to appeal to the United States courts. It passed both houses by good majorities and was signed by President Pierce May 30th.
Yea, although the usual state election time is some distance off, plans have been already secretly perfected not only to carry the election by the Democrats, but to reduce the Negro majorities by banishment, intimidation and murder.
To their surprise, he returned the bill to Congress with a veto message, so dispassionate, yet so entirely covering the case, that it threw the Democratic majorities in Congress into confusion, and forced them to abandon the programme they had marked out.
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