Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/484

474 condemned to punishment, they are shielded against prosecution. What could the constitution do more, for the vindication of an unlimited freedom of utterance, than expose itself to this license? Could it have intended to defend one officer of the government by criminal prosecutions, against the freedom of opinion, after having subjected the whole government to its inspection? We should, under an ignorance of its source, have attributed the constitution to beings more inconsistent and romantiek, than those whose errours were limited by human folly, had it exposed its own life to preserve an indispensible principle, and relinquished the same principle, to preserve the reputation of an individual. If such is the text of the constitution, three volumes written by a president, for the purpose of destroying our policy by hereditary orders, and laws for prosecuting sarcasms against the same president, may both be justified by its construction.

The criminality of bringing a president into contempt consists of its indirect tendency to destroy the government a direct attempt to destroy the same government cannot be less criminal. If an indirect attempt by writing or speaking was punishable, a direct attempt of the same kind would not have been shielded against punishment. He who reads Mr. Adams's sarcasms upon election, and eulogies upon hereditary orders, will confess, that they are as well calculated to bring a government, founded in one principle and reprobating the other, into contempt, as those uttered against one of its temporary officers.

Reverence for a magistrate, is frequently contempt for a constitution. The contempt of the English nation for James II. arose from a reverence for their form of government. A contempt for principles, and a reverence for men, conducted the French nation to the issue of that revolution. It is the policy of all despotick governments, enforced by sedition laws. In Turkey this policy is perfect. In England, where this policy is less pure than in Turkey, to assert that the king, by corrupting two branches of the legislature,