Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/424

414 the rights and duties of principals and agents are also divided, because there is no other social principal to depute or to instruct. Laws made by centuries or districts, each having a vote, or by the agents of each. are binding, because the society has adopted such modes of ascertaining the social majority; and the adoption of one mode, proves that no other exists. A division of the mode of exercising the natural right of self government, is extremely different from a division of the right itself. The first is indispensible in a large territory, from the impossibility of assembling the nation at one place, for the preservation of the right. But to cut the right itself asunder, and to lodge only half, or less than half, with the divisional mode for exercising and saving it, would certainly kill the whole. It is compounded of the powers of naming and instructing its agents. The instructing moiety is better than the naming moiety, as the right of naming an agent is no security if we cannot influence him; nor is it of much consequence who names him, if we can. If the divisional mode of exercising the right of self government, can only contain its form, but not its substance; and the aggregate mode has been determined by experience, to be unsuccessful in small, and impracticable in large countries, the conclusion is, that the right itself must die. It can be held but not exercised aggregately, and it can be exercised but not held divisionally.

The objection to the district right of instruction, is founded upon the idea, that a nation, though it divides election, retains aggregately the right of instruction. But all natural rights are individual, and this individuality is the substratum of our policy. It has not moulded this individuality into an aggregate right of instruction, but it has moulded it into a right of district election, without committing the errour of withholding the natural appurtenance of election, and breaking up the relation between principal and agent, to bestow on itself the following hideous aspect. If the electing, punishing and rewarding district, and this