Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/386

376 those made by the government, contrary to national right or publick good. Admitting, however, that the people of our Union have no right to save their liberties against an host of charters, Unless a precedent to justify it can be found (a doctrine as correct, as that they have no right to the Union or their policy, because they are unjustified by precedent) this English law furnishes such a precedent. Orders in England constitute the sovereignty; the people, in the United States. The sovereignty of orders annuls charters for sundry causes; the sovereignty of the people may therefore, even according to precedent, annul them for the same causes. No cause could be more completely within the reason and scope of the English doctrine, than one, which would tend to the destruction of the sovereignty of orders in that country; whatever tends to the destruction of the sovereignty of the people here, is equally within its scope and meaning. And the right of the sovereignty here to annul obreptitious charters, is stronger than it is in England, because there the charter may be the act of the sovereignty itself; here it can only be the act of the agents of the sovereignty, responsible, of limited powers, and having no power directly or indirectly to change the nature of the government by obreptitious charters.

Bank charters. in a vast variety of views, fall within this English law doctrine, unless the reasonings of this essay are incorrect. Who, for instance, was aware that this was a mode of indirect taxation? And who believed, that at this moment the United States were paying five millions worth of their property, annually, to a small portion of their people, for a fictitious currency?

These law charters, however sanctioned by legal forms, are never genuine national law. National will, in free governments, is the only genuine sanction of law. The will of the legislature, is the instrument for proclaiming this sanction. If a legislature should pass a law charter, for advancing the exclusive interest of the legislative body, or of