Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/435

Rh always sluggish, could never find it a powerful champion for liberty. For this ancient species of compact, our policy has substituted a chain of subordination, suspended from its principle of the right of self government. Our political sovereignty is the first link, and our government the second. The original right exercised its superiority over the social sovereignty previously existing, and over the whole herd of fictitious compacts between the people and the government, or between the states, or the states and the Union, at the last establishment of a general government; none of these governments had any agency in their own creation, or in that work. The state governments did not surrender, but the people transferred a portion of power, without their consent, from them to the general government, from the plenitude of the right of self government. Had any social compact existed, to which government was a party, it would by this transfer, have been violated. If these governments should frame compacts between themselves, even for self preservation, it would violate our policy, because it would impugn the sovereignty of the existing political society, and also detract from the national right of self government. Our political legislation depends upon the same plain sanction with civil legislation; superiority and subordination. Uncorrupted by imaginary compacts, the right of the general or state governments to break the Union, though by mutual consent, disappears; nor can the interpolations of these imaginary compacts or balances into our policy, whilst the national supervision of its governments and armies, by election and a "well regulated militia" remains, have any effect but to countenance the errour, that the government of the United States is a monarchy in disguise.

Religion, like politicks, has been inclosed within certain dogmas, out of which the human mind was long unable to push its operations. The contest between the grossest errours and the plainest truths, was long and doubtful, after its first glances. Guile and treachery, which constitute the