There can be but two kinds of republics proper--one a democratic republic, which is impossible for a great and populous Nation like ours, but which may have answered for some of the small republics of ancient Greece; the other, a representative republic, such as is boasted by the United States. And this is the kind palpably meant by the Fathers, when, for the very purpose of nipping in the bud any anti-republican Conspiracy likely to germinate from Slavery, they inserted in the Great Charter of American Liberties the solemn and irrevocable mandate: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." That they meant this majority rule--this government by the many, instead of the few--this rule of the People, as against any possible minority rule, by, or through, oligarchs or aristocrats, is susceptible of proof in other ways. It is a safe guide, in attempting to correctly expound the Constitution of the United States, to be careful that the construction insisted on, is compatible and harmonious with the spirit of that great instrument; so that--as was said by an eloquent and distinguished Massachusetts statesman of twenty years ago, in discussing this very point--"the guarantee of a Republican form of government must have a meaning congenial with the purposes of the Constitution." Those purposes, of course, are expressed in its preamble, or in the body of the instrument, or in both. The preamble itself, in this case, is sufficient to show them. It commences with the significant words: "We THE PEOPLE of the United States"--words, instinct with the very consciousness of the possession of that supreme power by the People or public, which made this not only a Nation, but a Republic; and, after stating the purposes or objects sought by the People in thus instituting this Republic, proceeds to use that supreme political power vested in them, by ordaining and establishing "this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America." And, from the very first article, down to the last, of that "Constitution," or "structure," or "frame," or "form" of government, already self-evidently and self-consciously and avowedly Republican, that form is fashioned into a distinctively representative Republican government. The purposes themselves, as declared in the preamble, for which the People of the United States thus spake this representative Republic into being, are also full of light. Those purposes were "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the General Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."