That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that
magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to
them.

That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit,
protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the
various modes and forms of government, that is the best which is capable of
producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most
effectually secured against the danger of mal-administration; and that, when
any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a
majority of the community bath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible
right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most
conducive to the public weal.

I have heard that read a score of times on the Fourth of July, but I never
heard it read where actual measures were being debated. No man who
understands the principles upon which this Republic was founded has the
slightest dread of the gentle,-though very effective,-measures by which the
people are again resuming control of their own affairs.

Nor need any lover of liberty be anxious concerning the outcome of the
struggle upon which we are now embarked. The victory is certain, and the
battle is not going to be an especially sanguinary one. It is hardly going to
be worth the name of a battle. Let me tell the story of the emancipation of
one State,-New Jersey:

It has surprised the people of the United States to find New Jersey at the
front in enterprises of reform. I, who have lived in New Jersey the greater
part of my mature life, know that there is no state in the Union which, so
far as the hearts and intelligence of its people are concerned, has more
earnestly desired reform than has New Jersey. There are men who have been
prominent in the affairs of the State who again and again advocated with all
the earnestness that was in them the things that we have at last been able to
do. There are men in New Jersey who have spent some of the best energies of
their lives in trying to win elections in order to get the support of the
citizens of New Jersey for programs of reform.

The people had voted for such things very often before the autumn of 1910,
but the interesting thing is that nothing had happened. They were demanding
the benefit of remedial measures such as had been passed in every progressive
state of the Union, measures which had proved not only that they did not
upset the life of the communities to which they were applied but that they
quickened every force and bettered every condition in those communities. But
the people of New Jersey could not get them, and there had come upon them a
certain pessimistic despair. I used to meet men who shrugged their shoulders
and said: "What difference does it make how we vote? Nothing ever results
from our votes." The force that is behind the new party that has recently
been formed, the so-called "Progressive Party," is a force of discontent with
the old parties of the United States. It is the feeling that men have gone
into blind alleys often enough, and that somehow there must be found an open
road through which men may pass to some purpose.