prophesy what the form of the future will be. It seems to me, however, that that form will be a republic. . . . It seems to me evident that the destiny of history is clearly pointing to the United States as the great world organ for the modern solution of the problem of government as well as of liberty."
Article 4, Section 4, of the Constitution provides: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government." It is inconceivable that the Fathers would guarantee a republican form of government to every State in the Union without the absolute intent of providing that same form of government for the nation.
It would seem that the founders of this republic, after a careful survey of the governments of history, concluded that autocracy resulted in tyranny and democracy merged into mobocracy, and they strove to avoid the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy by establishing the golden mean and founding a republic.
The new form of government provided for by the Constitution and evolved in 1788 A.D. was the first republic the world had ever known, and it may be clearly defined as follows:
A republic is a form of government under a constitution which provides for the election of
