Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/480

470 mingled together. One of them will constantly endeavour to plunder another. Robbery is the invariable design of a confederacy of legal privileges, and the retaliation it finally provokes is still more heinous. The wars between the whites and blacks of St. Domingo, being transitory, were inconsiderable in point of mischief or horrour, compared with those between legal nations, called orders, detailed by Mr. Adams. To make inimical interests friendly to each other, by the theory of balances, is more difficult than to establish harmony between different colours, because men will contend more malignantly for substance than for shadow.

Under the policy of the United States, the moral individuality of the nation being preserved by the elective mode of giving effect to its will, by an unity of rights. by its sovereignty over the government, and by the militia system, such a moral being may retain for the members which constitute itself, the liberty of conscience; but this becomes impossible after separate interests are substituted for united; after the government becomes the sovereign of the people; or after a mercenary army becomes the sovereign of the militia.

Freedom of religious opinion, is another link of the chain of rights, necessary to preserve election. If a government is invested with a power to inflict on the mind religious coercion, it will add political. And if it can mould opinion by force to suit its interests or designs in one case, it will do it in the other. The freedom of opinion is an indivisible right. If a government can split it at all, it may by frequent divisions destroy its strength. And as this freedom is the essence of election, whenever it is impaired in the case of religion, election itself receives a wound; which again illustrates its dependence for efficacy, on the preservation of other rights. Good and evil principles attract or gravitate towards each other, and are as incapable of exchanging places as matter and spirit. Political orders are therefore naturally unable to associate with reli-