The federal Constitution provides that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and protect each of them against invasion; and, on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot he convened) against domestic violence."1

In form, the first clause of this section would appear to he for the benefit of the States and to impose a duty upon the Federal Government, and such undoubtedly would be its effect should a foreign power attempt to impose a government of any sort whatever upon the people of one of the States against their will; or should a domestic revolution result in the establishment in power of a government not sanctioned by law of not freely agreed to by the electorate. In fact, however, as we have already seen, and as will presently be more particularly spoken of, this clause was so interpreted during reconstruction times as to give to the Federal Government for several years an almost unlimited power of control of the domestic affairs of those States that had been in rebellion against its authority.

It will be noticed that the Constitution does not itself define the term "republican form of government." It has, however, always been an accepted rule of construction that the technical and special terms used in the Constitution are to be given that meaning which they had at the time that instrument was framed. This is but reasonable, for, in default of anything to the contrary, those who drafted the Constitution are to be presumed to have intended the words which they used to have that meaning they knew them to have. For a definition, then, of "republican government" we must discover what in 1787" such a political form was considered to be. Certainly we may say that the governments of the thirteen original States as they existed at the time the Constitution was drafted must have been considered as illustrating the republican type. Furthermore, the Constitutions of all those States which have been admitted to the Union since 1787 must be regarded as having been impliedly declared republican by Congress at the time of the giving of its assent to their entrance into the Union.

The late Judge Cooley, in his Principles of Constitutional Law2 has perhaps defined the term as satisfactorily as anyone. "By a republican form of government," he says, "is understood a government by representatives chosen by the people; and it contrasts on the one side with a democracy, in which the people or community as an organized whole wield the sovereign powers of government, and, on the other side, with the rule of one man as King, Emperor, Czar, or Sultan, or with that of one class of men, as an aristocracy." "In strictness," Judge Cooley goes on to say, "a republican government is by no means inconsistent with monarchical forms, for a King may be merely an hereditary or elective executive while the powers of legislation are left exclusively to a representative body freely chosen by the people. It is to be observed, however, that it is a republican form of government that is to be guaranteed; and in the light of the undoubted fact that by the Revolution it was expected and intended to throw off monarchical and aristocratic forms, there can be no question but that by a republican form of government was intended a government in which not only would the people's representatives make the laws, and their agents administer them, but the people would also, directly or indirectly, choose the executive. But it would by no means follow that the whole body of people, or even the whole body of adult and competent persons, would be admitted to political privileges; and in any republican .State the law must determine the qualifications for admission to the elective franchise."

1 Art. IV, Sec. 4. 2 Chapter XI (Federal Supervision Of State Activities; The Fourteenth Amendment. 85. The Fourteenth Amendment).

In United States v. South Carolina,3 a case decided in 1905, an obiter suggestion was made by the court in its majority opinion that a State by assuming the control of the manufacture and distribution of certain commodities, and, especially, by acquiring and undertaking the management of public utilities might thereby Iota its republican form of government. To the suggestions thus made no weight can be given. Whether or not a government is republican in form depends not upon the sphere of its activities, but upon the maimer in which its functionaries are selected, and the degree of their legal responsibility to the people. Thus there would be no difficulty in the most socialistic of States having a government of the purest republican type. This suggestion to the contrary by the Supreme Court is the first- that the writer has seen.

3 199 U. S. 437; 26 Sup. Ct. Rep. 110; 50 L. ed. 261.