Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/538

526 "ment and such a confederation, would be unconquerable by all the monarchies of Europe."

"This plan of a government for a colony, you see is intended as a temporary expedient under the present pressure of affairs. The government once formed, and having settled its authority, will have leisure enough to make any alterations that time and experience, and more mature deliberation, may dictate. Particularly, a plan may be devised, perhaps, and be thought expedient, for giving the choice of the governour to the people at large, and of the counsellors to the freeholders of the counties. But be these things as they may, two things are indispensably to be adhered to; one, is some regulation for securing forever an equitable choice of representatives; another, is the education of youth both in literature and morals."

"I wish, my dear sir, that I had time to think of these things more at leisure, and to write more correctly. But you must take these hints rough as they run. Your own reflections, assisted by the patriots of North Carolina, will improve upon every part of them."

"As you brought upon yourself the trouble of reading these crude thoughts, you can't blame your friend."

Principles and convictions are expressed in this dissertation, in ideas and language, as strong, as plain, and undoubtedly as honest, as in the book of the same author upon the same subject; his mind must have attained to its maturity at the time of the first composition; and the force of the difference between a struggle for liberty, and an enjoyment of a rich executive office, only remains to account for the different appearance of the same principles and the same words to the same mind, at different times. A few remarks will sufficiently display this difference.

In the dissertation, the sovereignty of the people is unequivocally asserted, as the basis of society and civil power. Representation is made its substitute, from the impossibility of holding national assemblies. And being drawn from this origin, its perfection is made to consist in thinking,