Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/460

450 anomalous to human nature; physical, and not intellectual, like a corps; or intellectual, and not physical, like a ghost. By losing both, it is annihilated, as having neither a physical nor intellectual power.

We cannot condescend to enter the lists with the wicked artifice of destroying nations, by a fraudulent use of words and phrases; such as licentiousness, sedition, privilege, charter and conventicle; because a nation, capable of being subdued by these feeble instruments, is incapable of liberty, as a man is of long life, who can be persuaded to hold out his throat to the knife of an assassin, lest he should cut it himself.

It would swell this essay beyond the contemplated size, to enumerate and explain all the rights held by the people of the United States independently of their government. Such a work would however be extremely useful, for instructing us in the principles of our policy, and for demonstrating that these rights are so linked together, that not a single link can be removed, without materially impairing the strength of the chain.

But the dexterity of the artifice, which inculcates an opinion, already contested, that if the link of election re- mains, it will alone constitute a security for liberty, as strong as the entire chain of these rights, induces me to select the rights of a real national militia, and of a freedom religion, of speech and of the press, both to display the vast superiority of our policy over any other, in their recognition; and also to prove that the strength and efficacy of the right of election, is itself dependent on the real operation of other rights.

It is a principle of our policy, that the military should be subordinate to the civil power. Why was this subordination required, and how is it to be enforced? It was required on account of the universal insubordination of mercenary armies, to every species of civil power, not their accomplice in oppression. Not that soldiers are more cruel, avaricious or tyrannical than priests, stockjobbers or