Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/493

Rh to be inflicted by judges of national appointment; if such a regimen would transfer the sovereignty from an aristocraey to the people, it follows that the same, only reversing the case, will transfer it from the people to any political power, however composed, which can thus prescribe and enforce, as to them.

This demonstration is ingeniously evaded, by resorting to the representative quality of our policy, and thence inferring, that such rules or laws are to be considered as the act of the people, or of the sovereignty itself, by its representatives; or as restraints imposed by one's own will, upon one's self.

Under this decoy, every measure of the government, intended directly or indirectly to transfer the sovereignty from the nation to itself, might be hidden. There can hardly exist a degree of sagacity, unequal to its detection.

Election and representation may be united with a sovereignty of orders; it cannot therefore of itself constitute a sovereignty of the people. Election and orders act together under the English policy; there, election disavows the existence of a sovereignty of the people; here, to cover assaults upon this sovereignty, it is said to be constituted by election, and exercised by representation. In England, say the disciples of the same political system, representation helps to take sovereignty from the people, and bestows it upon the government; but in America, representation takes it from the government, and bestows it upon the people. In England, suffrage and sovereignty are considered as distinct, and suffrage is allowed no portion of sovereignty; here they are considered as one and the same, by those who are for giving the sovereign power to the government, merely to amuse the people with its shadow.

By allowing to the people that species of sovereignty, which can be found in suffrage and representation, and no other, it results, that the people may be deprived of free discussion without injuring their sovereignty; according to the facetious corallary; that if I choose a sovereign, I am