The Pall Mall Gazette had a very able article on
Wednesday, pointing out how entirely the American Constitution has failed to control the majority of the nation when bent on preventing any further danger to the Union from internal explosions such as that of 1860, and argues thence that "King Majority" will always ultimately override special constitutional arrangements,—appar- ently inferring that we should be much wiser to establish the rule- of the majority at once in our next Reform Bill, than to draw up provisions for evading its rule, which could not but be broken down on the first collision. The only criticism we have to, pass on that statement is, that there are innumerable points on which the will of the majority is never likely to be either inter- ested enough, or sufficiently pronounced, to bring about such a collision. And America itself furnishes us the example. The Constitution, so far as it guarded State sovereignties, has no. doubt been overridden with a high hand. But the Constitution of the Senate, wherein all States, large and small, are equally repre- sented, is itself a representation of minorities which has led as yet to no such collision, and the nation is apparently as well satisfied with it as ever, and as unlikely to alter it. There is no reason why a fair representative assembly, representing not King Majority only, but the whole nation, should ever come into radical collision with the will of King Majority, who in fact knows his own will only on a few very important subjects,—on which he is likely enough to be right.
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