Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/499

Rh to subject the nation to a sovereignty of the government. And it provides a militia, as the physical mode for securing obedience to the moral means by which the will of the nation is disclosed. Like twins growing to each other, either of these guardians of national sovereignty perishes, if the other ceases to exist. Sedition laws destroy one, and standing armies the other. Either, therefore, terminate in despotism; a militia deprived of its intellectual associate, presently becomes a maniack, who must be disarmed and guarded by a mercenary army, which confines him to a bed of straw, and feeds him upon bread and water. And intellectual freedom, severed from its physical friend, is John the Baptist preaching to a wilderness. United, they are the body and soul of popular government, just as free will and a standing army, are the body and soul of monarchy. Destroy the body or soul of either, and the whole being dies.

If these reasonings are correct, the inconsistency between a sovereignty' of the people, and a power in government to regulate the thoughts or discussions of this sovereignty, is such, as to render it impossible that both qualities can subsist in one government.

One of them must be unequivocally surrendered by a candid politician, unless he can devise a species of dual sovereignty, upon the principles of the Athauasian creed. Even then his political creed would fall short of the perspicuity of its model, if he allowed the sovereignty of government, to regulate by sedition laws the sovereignty of the people. He would have to prove that a political almighty, could beget a more potent almighty.

The existence of national sovereignty is asserted every where by the policy of the United States, and under its auspice the general constitution sought for a sanction by the terms, "We the people." Rob it of this sanction, and what is its obligation? Or suppose the people had as unequivocally relinquished, as they have exercised their sovereignty by that instrument, still the question would have turned upon