Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/494

484 myself a sovereign. But, rejecting this mode of reasoning, and allowing to nations a right of self government or a national sovereignty, anterior to suffrage; the primitive of suffrage itself and the antecedent of law; it realizes a national free right of discussion, as radical as the right of self government itself, because the one cannot exist without the other.

Illustrations of this reasoning may be drawn from the English parliament. Though the house of commons is the creature of suffrage, this very house denies to its elector, any portion of sovereignty, and constitutes, with the other orders, the sovereign power. In its character of sovereignty, it exercises the right of free discussion, because this right is essential to sovereignty. Deprived of it, the house of commons would constitute no portion of a sovereignty. Deprived of the same right, the people can constitute no portion of a sovereignty. The people have suffrage and representation in England, but not free discussion; and the parliament without the two first, and with the last, possesses the sovereignty. It is thence evident, that the sovereignty of the parliament arises from the right of free discussion, and the want of sovereignty in the people, from the loss of that right. Parliamentary will, opinion and sovereignty, is of course substituted for national. The parliament restrains individuals by sedition laws, upon the same principle that the people of the United States restrain governments, political departments and publick officers, by constitutions. The English nation suffer, what the American people inflict; namely, political restraints; because that nation is the subject of parliamentary sovereignty, and our government is the subject of national sovereignty. Sovereignty only is competent to inflict, and subjection to suffer, political regulations and restraints. Monarchs never think of imposing these regulations and restraints upon themselves, by constitutions or sedition laws, because sovereignty is unable to restrain sovereignty. My will to day, cannot bind my will tomorrow. If the prior will should resolve to