Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/560

548 speak far more untruths than truths." And he countenances our conjecture, by a definition of law, in which, distinguishing between common law and prescribed law; meaning by the first natural justice, and by the other human in- stitution; he defines the latter to be the common consent of a city," instead of referring to monarchy, or a sovereignty of balanced orders, as its source. And (agreeing with Mr. Adams in the dissertation we have transcribed) he says, "For thus the people being able to confer honour on whom they please, will not envy those who receive it; and eminent men will exercise probity and sincerity, to gain the esteem of the people." The people, not privileged orders, are to draw eminent qualities from eminent men. How? By election and responsibility, or by rejecting the government of authority, and exercising self government. A monarchy made out of Aristotle, as girls make a peacock by patching together shreds of silk, in the face of his unequivocal preference of a popular government for an agricultural people, would be a perfect emblem of authority.

Religion or patriotism by deputy, is the cause of the errours and mischiefs of both; and parties or individuals, pretending to be pious or patriotick, because they believe another to be so, are universally knaves or fools. The most ignorant, unenslaved by authority, discerns goodness by the light of his conscience, and distinguishes between an easy and a hard government, by the light of his senses. But authority. by depriving us of conscience and sensation in religion and government, causes such calamities as are encountered by a blind man who is a lunatick. It assures us that human reason can neither select a religion nor a government, for the sake of making a tyrant of this very reason. It confines us to revelation and to nature, as the authors of its dogmas, but refuses to our human reason a capacity to construe either, that it may construe both by its human reason, to enslave and defraud ours. And being in its own essence a tyrant, its followers, whether prompted by knav-