Sometimes we hear that a government with an elective chief magistrate is a republic. Here, again, nothing is said of aristocracy or oligarchy, which coexist with an elective chief magistrate,--as in Venice, where the elected Doge was surrounded by an oligarchy of nobles, and in Holland, where the elected Stadtholder was a prince surrounded by princes. But there are other instances which make this definition unsatisfactory, if not absurd. The Pope of Rome is an elective chief magistrate; so also is the Grand Lama; but surely the States of the Church are not republican, nor is Thibet. Rejecting the definition founded on the elective character of the chief magistrate, we must also reject another, founded on “the sovereignty of more than one man.” It has been said positively, by an eminent person who has written much on the subject, that “the strict definition of a republic is that in which the sovereignty resides in more than one man.”[80] But this strict definition embraces aristocracies and oligarchies. I conclude these rejected specimens with that of Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary, which appeared before American Independence:-- “REPUBLIC. (1.) Commonwealth; state in which the power is lodged in more than one. (2.) Common interest; the public.” These definitions are all as little to the purpose as the “vulgar error,” chronicled by Sir Thomas Browne, “that storks are to be found and will only live in republics,”[81]--or the saying of Rousseau, at a later day, that, “were there a nation of gods, it would govern itself democratically,”[82]--or the remark of John Adams, that “all good government is republican.”[83] It is evident that we must turn elsewhere for the illumination we need. If others thus far have failed, it is because they have looked across the sea instead of at home, and have searched foreign history and example instead of simply recognizing the history and example of their own country. They have imported inapplicable and uncertain definitions, forgetting that the Fathers, by positive conduct, by solemn utterances, by declared opinions, and by public acts, all in harmony and constituting one overwhelming testimony, exhibited their idea of a republican government in a way at once applicable and certain. They are the natural interpreters of their own Constitution. Mr. Fox, the eminent English statesman, exclaimed in debate, that, “if, by a peculiar interposition of Divine power, all the wisest men of every age and of every country could be collected into one assembly, he did not believe that their united wisdom would be capable of forming even a tolerable constitution,”[84]--meaning, of course, that a constitution must be derived from habits and convictions, and not from any invention. There is sound sense in the remark; and it is in this spirit that I turn from a discussion having only this value, that it shows how little there is in the past to interpret the meaning of the Fathers.