Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/500

490 the power of one generation, to surrender a natural right of another.

Admitting this power to exist, and admitting also that the establishment of a government is a virtual surrender on the part of the people of their sovereignty, according to the ideas of Mr, Adams, and of all those who assert, that on this event, sovereignty deserts its old habitation, and transfuses itself into a new one; just as some conjurers can shoot their souls out of one body into another. Allowing these concessions to be true, a new dilemma arises from an idea heretofore suggested. The people had established governments previously to the erection of the general government; and if this act causes a transmigration of the soul of sovereignty from a nation, the people had no remaining sovereignty to transfuse into the general government. This doctrine would make the state governments sovereigns, over which the people could not more rightfully place a sovereign, than they now can over the general government. Thus the only sanction of the federal government, consists in the doctrine of popular sovereignty ; or that governments are agents, and not masters. Deprive it of this, and it becomes a rebel against the sovereignty of state governments. Mr. Adams both laboured to plant state policy in British principles, which deny any species of sovereignty to the people; and testified in favour of the sovereignty of the people, by allowing the federal to be a legitimate government. As the federal government cannot legitimately exist, except by admitting that the people are the sovereigns of governments; so the system of orders, or checks and balances, cannot exist, except by admitting it to be the sovereign of the people. National sovereignty would throw into confusion all the weights, and unhinge the whole architecture of the cheeks and balances. Accordingly, no instance has occurred of orders, admitting themselves to be bound by popular conventions, as did the state governments in the case of the federal constitution. Thus we discern, that sedition laws are consistent with the system of orders, for the same