But turn the chase in another direction, if peradventure we may yet run the sovereign people to cover. The more absolute democratic theorists decline to restrict the sovereign body to the electorate, to those who have formal votes. Voters are simply the agents of the community, they say. The press and the pulpit, the private argument and the curtain lecture, command--voters, if they are faithful, obey. Others, no less democratic, but more precise, seek for a more determinate body, content themselves with the qualified voters, and think with relief that all difficulties are removed. The electorate is sovereign. But is the electorate a more determinate body than the population? Does registration afford us any more certain results than the census yields? Do the electors act in determinate numbers? Is there a quorum? Have they any choice but to act under the forms and within the limits assigned by law? Can they command without invitation, or assent without suggestion? Are not the agencies which Judge Jameson calls sovereign after all more active, more self-directed, freer to criticise, to suggest, to insist? The newspapers, the clergymen, the mass-meeting orators, the urgent friends, the restless, ambitious wives, the pert and forward children can at any rate keep on talking in the intervals, when the electors are reduced to silence, patiently awaiting an opportunity to vote. Certainly, if we can accept this miscellaneous sovereign of men-women-and-children, the history of sovereignty is much simplified. This determinate body of persons, the free population, is always present, and always has been present, under all constitutions. All that we have to inquire is, What means had they for expressing their will? How were their dispositions and judgments made to tell upon the consciousness of those who framed the laws? True, this sovereign body has its points of resemblance to the god Baal. Those who call upon it call in vain, if it be not the season appointed for voting; there is no voice, nor any that answer, nor any that regardeth. No fire consumes the sacrifice. Perhaps the People is talking, or is pursuing, or is in a journey, or peradventure it sleepeth, and must be awaked.