Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/457

Rh I am writing. The growing taxes, sinecures and dividends, will probably make each free born Englishman, worth three or four times as much to the stock order, as each base born Helot was to the Spartan, by the time this essay shall be read, if it ever is read.

Let us return from this digression, if it be one, to the comparison we have undertaken. Mr. Adams's system is incapable of a division of rights between a nation and a government. This idea is incompatible with hereditary, but conformable to responsible power. It is incompatible with natural orders, but conformable to natural rights. And it is incompatible with the opinion, that the people are no guardians, but conformable to the opinion, that they are the best guardians of their own liberty. Therefore his system annihilates that sacred effort of our policy, to withhold powers useless or pernicious; and to secure rights necessary for the preservation of liberty, or without the office of governments. Among these, the rights of bearing arms, of religion, and of discussion, constitute of themselves a measureless superiority in our policy, over any other, unable, by reason of different principles, to place them beyond the reach of government; as we shall presently endeavour to prove.

If a nation surrenders all its rights to a government, it cannot be free. Freedom consists in having rights, beyond the reach and independent of the will of another; slavery, in having none. The form of the master, or his having three heads or one head, does not create the slave. It is on account of the opinions; that nations might be made free by the form of the master, and that the powers of a government are incapable of limitation; that they have been so universally enslaved. From this point, a glance discerns the wide difference between our political system, and the British or Mr. Adams's. The parliament, or orders, are theoretically and practically omnipotent. Such is the doctrine of the British government and of the British lawyers. The government possesses unlimited power, and the nation