Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/492

482 and liberty? Have we torn this mantle of imposture from false gods, wherewith to enrobe false patriots?

Having submitted to the consideration of the reader a few general arguments to prove, that for the preservation of civil liberty, sound policy dictates an unlimited freedom of discussion, concerning magistrates and their measures; and that if the magistracy can restrain discussion, human reason, instead of being a check, will he made an accomplice of usurpation; it behoves us now to view the question under the particular policy of the United States.

Without stopping to explain the consequences of a common power in the general and state governments to make and modify sedition ; to declare the same words to be false aud penal there, and true and meritorious here; and with out anticipating the mutual reprisals to he expected, from these pretended cruisers after truth, detached by aggression or defence into their respective territories; let us come at once to the fundamental principle of our policy and constitutions, and consider whether it can be sustained, under a government regulating publick opinion, by law, judges and juries. A nation, to retain rights, or exercise self government, must be an intellectual and political being. Thinking is as necessary to a body politick, to enable it to shun evil and obtain good, as to any other reasonable being. If a monarch, an aristocracy, or a parliament, possess the sovereignty of a country, a doctrine that these sovereignties should not think, speak or discuss, except according to such rules as should be prescribed to them by the people, would be equivalent to the doctrine, that a nation possessing the soveveignty, should not think, speak or discuss, except according to such rules as should be prescribed to them by a monarchy an aristocracy or a parliament. In both eases the sovereignty would he transferred from the automatical to the prescribing power.

Suppose an aristocracy to hold the sovereignty, and the rest of a nation to assemble and prescribe to it rules for thinking, speaking or discussing, enforced by punishments