To repeat, then, for the question so often stated in the abstract form as that of the right of the state to be should be substituted that as to the right of its government to be and to exercise the functions that it does and to exer cise them in the manner that it does. As the author of this article has elsewhere had occa sion to state it: °The right to be of the polit ical authority itself is not in issue, for, ab stractly considered, that is, as apart from any particular form of organization, or manner of operation, there is no basis upon which a judg ment may be founded. It is not until the state manifests its power and authority that mate rial is afforded to which moral estimates may be applied.° The Doctrine of the "Consent of the — We are nowprepared to ex amine the meaning and validity of that doc trine, promulgated in the Declaration of Inde pendence, and accepted as fundamental in American political philosophy, according to which all governments °derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.° Without stopping to consider what the founders of the American Union probably meant by this phrase, it may be here said that the principle stated by it has a validity only in so far as it is held to state or imply that all governments should be so administered as to promote to as high a degree as is possible the good of all the governed; and that, therefore, the governed have at all times the moral right — though not necessarily the legal right — to see to it that this is done, and consequently the right, if there be no better way, of over turning an existing government and establish ing in its place one more likely to subserve their own general good. Imoliedly, then, the doctrine properly means that every state should be so organized as to render possible and easy the discovery of the best interests of the gov erned. As, however, generally speaking, these best interests are most certainly to be deter mined by the intelligent wishes of those con cerned, this means, in the first place, that, so far as the state itself is able to provide them, agencies should exist for developing the intel ligence of its citizens and thus qualifying them to know their own best interests; in the sec ond place that adequate provision should be made for the free expression by the people of their wishes; and, finally, in the third place, that sufficient guarantees should exist that these wishes when made known will be heeded by those in power.
That the foregoing requirements of an ethi cally defensible government may be satisfied, it is necessary that all public officials shall be held strictly responsible, politically and civilly, for the manner in which they exercise the powers entrusted to them; that freedom of speech and press shall prevail; that the rights to petition, to assemble peaceably and to bear arms shall exist; and that political privileges — the suffrage and the right to be elected or appointed to public office — shall be as widely extended as the intelligence and morality of the citizens will permit. Speaking negatively the doctrine of the °consent of the governed° does not support the legal right, nor, except in extreme cases, the moral right, of each individual citizen to refuse obedience to par ticular laws which he may consider unjust, nor at will to cast off his allegiance to his state, nor to claim the suffrage or public office as an abstract right.
The ethical right of one people forcibly to subject another people to its political author ity, that is, to destroy the sovereignty of its state and annex its territory, as, for example, the right of the United States to control the political destinies of the Filipinos, or of Eng land to extend her authority over the peoples of the South African Republic (Transvaal), and the Orange Free State, is a somewhat dif ferent question from that of the right of a particular government to exercise a control over its own citizens. There is an exceedingly strong presumption not only that a given peo ple best knows its own interests and the means of advancing them, but that, stimulated by the consciousness of national independence, it will develop its latent potentialities in a manner that it will not, or cannot, do when subjected to an alien authority. But this presumption, however strong, is one that may be rebutted. It may be made sufficiently plain that a people, because of a lack of intellectual and moral development or a deficiency in natural ability and temperament, is not able either to perceive its own best interests or so to govern its con duct as to realize them when perceived; or, in determining upon its domestic or foreign poli cies, to give sufficient weight to the moral and legal rights of other states and their citizens. The interests of civilization are superior to those of any particular people. Judged from this general standpoint, it may, therefore, often happen that the forcible subjection of one peo ple to the political rule of another is justified.
This right of course appears most plainly in the case of the subjection of an uncivilized people to a civilized nation, but is not necessa rily limited to such a case. The continued unsatisfactory political conditions existing among many of the peoples of South and Cen tral America, of the races inhabiting the Bal kan Peninsula and of the whole of the Turk ish dominions certainly furnishes to the other states of Europe and America a very strong basis of right to intervention. The language of Prof. J. W. Burgess is hardly too strong when, after adverting to the fact that it is in the interest of the world's best civilization that law and order and the true liberty con sistent therewith shall reign everywhere upon the globe, he declares that 'a state or states, endowed with a capacity for political organi zation, may righteously assume sovereignty over, and undertake to create order for, a po litically incompetent population.'" Classifications of As many different classifications of governments may be made as there are characteristics of governments suitable for selection as differentiating elements or factors. The best known of these possible classifications is the one that has come down to us from ancient times, which divides the various kinds of political organization into three main classes, according as the supreme political control is in the hands of a single individual, in which case the government is known as a monarchy; in the hands of a few persons, when it is described as an aristocracy; or in the hands of the general citizen populace, when it is termed a democracy. A further or sub-classi fication divides each of these three types into normal and corrupt forms, the corrupt monarchy being termed a tyranny, the corrupt aristocracy an oligarchy, and the corrupt democracy an ochlocracy or mobocracy. A still further sub division divides monarchies into elective and hereditary according to the source whence the monarch derives his right to office; and into absolute or limited (or constitutional) according as the monarch in the exercise of his authority is, or is not, controlled by definite constitu tional principles and by the action of other governmental officials selected by the people; aristocracies into particular types according to the principle, wealth or birth, upon which mem bership in the ruling class is determined; and democracies into direct and indirect according to whether their people directly participate in the control of the state or delegate the exercise of their sovereign powers to officials selected by and responsible to themselves. In the latter case the government is known as a represen tative democracy or republic. The Consti tution of the United States, without defining the term, provides that : 'The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government" The Fed eral courts, though they have several times been called upon to construe and apply this clause, have never attempted directly to determine the meaning of the term 'republican form of gov ernment.) The eminent constitutional jurist, Judge Cooley, gives, however, the following definition which has been generally accepted as correctly expressing the meaning of the phrase as employed in American law and American political thought: By republican 'government. he says; is understood a government by representatives chosen by the people, and it contrasts on one side with a democracy, in which the people or community as an organized whole wield sovereign powers of government. and on the other with the rule of one man, as king, emperor. csar, or sultan, or with that of one class of men, as an aristocracy. In strictnesa, a repub lican government is by no means inconsistent with mo narchioal forms, for a king may be merely an hereditary or elective executive, while the powers of legislation are left exclusively to a representative body freely chosen by the people. It is to be observed, however, that it is a republican form of government that is to be guaranteed; and in the light of the undoubted fact that by the Revolution it was expected and intended to throw off monarchical and aristo cratic forms, there can be no question but that by a repub lican form of government was intended a government in which not only would the people's representatives make the laws, and their agents administer them, but the people would also. directly or indirectly, choose the executive. But it would by no means follow that the whole body of the people, or even the whole body of adult or competent persons, would be admitted to political privileges; and in any republican state, the law must determine the qualifi cations for admission to the elective franchise.