Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/482

472 this ability is the effect of its principles, and beyond the reach of Mr. Adams's system, or of any other, unable to reserve to the people, and to withhold from governments, a variety of rights. Of the three selected as illustrations, the right of free inquiry remains to be considered.

Caligula's appointment of his horse to the consulship, is both an illustration and a mockery of the idea of national sovereignty, without the freedom of utterance; and a nation, the members of which can only speak, and write as government pleases, is exactly this consular sovereign.

But although the rights of the horse and the nation may be equal, their happiness will be unequal. The thoughts of the horse being under no legal control, he retains this natural source of pleasure. Man's thoughts, suffered to flow, furnish the purest streams of human happiness. Dam'd up by law, they stagnate, putrify and poison. To his characteristick qualities of speaking and writing, all man's social discoveries and improvements are owing. Qualities which distinguish him from the brute creation, must be natural rights; and those which are the parents of social order, must be useful and beneficial. Why should governments declare war against them.

Expression is the respiration of mind. Deprived of respiration, the mind sickens, languishes and dies, like the body. It flourished in the climates of Greece and Italy, whilst it could breathe freely; it has decayed in the same climates, according to the degrees of suppression it has suffered. Wherever it can breathe freely, mind seems to begin to live; swells, as if by enchantment, to a sublime magnitude; and suddenly acquires wonderful powers. The objection against a free respiration of mind, is, that it may occasionally emit from its lungs (according to our metaphorical license) noxious vapours. The same reason is infinitely stronger for smothering body; its lungs constantly emit noxious vapours. If we deprive mind of health or life, because its breath is sometimes noxious, let us adhere to the principle and finish the work, by smothering