Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/512

502 either overturn Mr. Adams's system, or be overturned by it. To his system, armies, patronage, paper and sedition laws are congenial, because sovereignty is lodged in orders. These, consisting of a minority, and possessing only a factitious and fraudulent sovereignty, need such auxiliaries. They must of necessity resort to armies, patronage, privileges, corruption and sedition laws, or surrender the sovereignty. These are suitable to a sovereignty of orders, because they impair or destroy the sovereignty of the people. But our system renders armies, patronage, privileges, corruption and sedition laws unnecessary, by placing sovereignty in a majority, which needs no auxiliary, can find none, is able to defend itself, and attracts no enmity from a better title. A transition from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of a government, is a revolution only to be effected by artificial a cumulations of power or wealth, by armies, patronage, privileges, paper or sedition laws; of course these instruments are mortal enemies to our policy.

We will take leave of this subject with the following observation. The design of substituting political for religious heresy, is visible in the visage of sedition laws. A civil priesthood or government, hunting after political heresy, is an humble imitator of the inquisition, which fines, imprisons, tortures and murders, sometimes mind, at others, body. It affects the same piety. feigned by priestcraft at the burning of an heretick; and its party supplies such exultations, as those exhibited at an auto de fee, by a populace; and the same passions and interest which furnish cruelty to fraud and superstition, banish commiseration from avarice and ambition, towards those guilty of the unpardonable heresy of opposing their designs.

It is remarkable that the individual, so instrumental in disclosing the wickedness and folly of the notion, that the reputation of the deity needed the protection of heretical laws, became also an example to prove, that the reputation of governments and publick officers, did not need the