Already Wilkes, standing up stoutly for the democratic views of the governor, who was so foully to requite him, had assured the English government that the "people were ready to cut the throats" of the Staten-General at any convenient moment.

The sovereign people, not the deputies, were alone to be heeded, he said, and although he never informed the world by what process he had learned the deliberate opinion of that sovereign, as there had been no assembly excepting those of the States-General and States-Provincial--he was none the less fully satisfied that the people were all with Leicester, and bitterly opposed to the States.
"For the sovereignty, or supreme authority," said he, through failure of a legitimate prince, belongs to the people, and not to you, gentlemen, who are only servants, ministers, and deputies of the people.

You have your commissions or instructions surrounded by limitations--which conditions are so widely different from the power of sovereignty, as the might of the subject is in regard to his prince, or of a servant in, respect to his master.

For sovereignty is not limited either as to power or as to time.

Still less do you represent the sovereignty; for the people, in giving the general and absolute government to the Earl of Leicester, have conferred upon him at once the exercise of justice, the administration of polity, of naval affairs, of war, and of all the other points of sovereignty.