Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/426

416 eratical or monarchical sovereignty, that periodical agents, above their intermediate control, would speedily subvert their sovereignties. Who ever thought of preserving life, by a perpetual obligation to swallow all the drugs administered by a periodical succession of doctors? Would not free nations soon die of their doctors, when the highest fees are gained by the most poisonous prescriptions? And to what purpose would the epoch of election return, after freedom was dead? It is a question of fact precluding argument. History abounds with the treasons of agents towards nations. Denmark recently, and France before our eyes, were betrayed to tyranny by elected legislative agents.

Without denying to our species of sovereignty the right of self preservation, we are perplexed as to the modes of exercising this right by blending sovereignty with agency; and the demonstration of the integral sovereignty of districts, as to legislation, is somewhat obscured by the idea of degrading them into agents, without discerning that it would exalt lower agents into sovereigns. Like the electors of the president and Maryland senators, once accoutred in the garb of agency, districts become subordinate, and evanescent; and our sovereignty is dissolved, or embalmed by verbal syrup into a mummy, retaining only a periodical nomination of sovereigns. No species of sovereignty can subsist, without subsisting attributes equal to its preservation. I am speaking of social sovereignty, and not of the natural right to resist oppression; of organical, not of irregular remedies. The natural right appears throughout history, to be the least successful guardiar of liberty, and as frequently the author as the destroyer of tyranny.

An independency of district instruction, is assumed upon Mr. Adams's doctrine of virtual representation. That doctrine recognises hereditary usurpers, as national representatives; the British parliament as representatives of America, and each district agent as the representative of an entire nation. Virtual representation and a balance of orders or powers, are twin labourers for transforming our division