Besides, in point of fact, they are rights which are practically valid for you only in the will of the sovereign. Whether they are in their nature primordial or prescriptive rights, makes no difference as to this point. The will of the sovereign is the only effectual guarantee of the natural rights of individuals, and the only source of their political rights. The sovereign recognizes the former, confers the latter, and secures both. There is not a particle of political right or power possessed or exercised by any individual in the nation which is not derived by grant from the sovereign power. A certain number of individuals in the nation have, for instance, the right of voting at the primary elections and for the determination of certain questions submitted to a popular vote. This is a delegated right, granted only to a certain number of individuals, not as sovereigns or parcel sovereigns, but as subjects of the state, acting, for certain definite purposes, and within certain prescribed limits, as agents of the sovereign power. So with all other political powers exercised in the nation--whether legislative, judicial, or executive; whether exercised by individuals or by constituted bodies: all stand in the will of the sovereign power; all are derived and delegated powers--ministerial, and not imperial. * * * * * It is easy now to see the pernicious influence which your doctrine about the sovereign rights of individuals must have upon the unreflecting masses who accept it as sound sense, and particularly upon those of them who vote at the primary elections. In the first place, it generates a false and practically mischievous notion of their relation to the other constituted authorities of the state. You are yourself an example in point. You ask whether it is a mistake or an exaggeration in you to 'say that presidents, and governors, and all the departments of State or Federal machinery, are all subordinate to the people?'