Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/513

Rh protection of sedition laws. Whilst we see the shafts of calumny falling harmless around human integrity, we con clade, both that they can never reach celestial perfection, and also, that human virtue ought to recoil from an ally, whose resemblance to the ugliest foe of religion and piety, is so exact.

We now proceed to the consideration of two features of the federal constitution, which have been claimed by the theory of orders, and even renounced by that of self government. If either of these opinions are correct, then this essay incorrectly maintains, that the will of a majority is our elementary principle. It is said, that the form of the senate, and the rule, that three-fourths of the states should concur in amending the constitution, are violations of that principle; and that aristocracy is interwoven with our policy, in the power of a minority through the states or the senate, to arrest amendments and to pass laws. Had this assertion been true, our system of reasoning would have required the arrangement of these features among the defects of the general constitution; on the contrary, we shall arrange them among its beauties, and endeavour to prove their strict conformity with the policy of the United States.

Let us first consider, whether the senate is in fact deformed, as some think, or embellished, according to others, with aristocratical qualities.

The federal government is the creature of two kinds of beings, which I will call physical and moral, Meaning by physical beings, the individuals of the United States; and by moral, the state governments. Our elementary principle in forming a government compounded of both, was equivalently used as the best resource for preserving the rights of both. Accordingly, both popular majority and state majority are resorted to by the constitution of the United States, upon similar principles and for similar ends.