Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/23

 was limited by the particular boundaries of its own Colony, their acts having no obligation or force beyond the local limits of such territory. None of these governments, however, exhibited any such body politic as The People, for they all derived their powers, either mediately or immediately, from the British Kings, whose mere agents they ever had been, and then were. Nor were these Societies themselves known by any common name of distinction, but only as the Colony of Virginia, the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, of Canada, of Nova Scotia, and the like; for each of these communities was then separate and distinct, in all things, from every other, the Colonists being connected by no other social or political tie, save that of the allegiance which all acknowledged, not to any People, but to the Crown of Great Britain.

British misrule converted some of these subjects, whose loyalty had once been the highest boast, into sturdy insurgents against the authority they had before delighted to acknowledge; and in triumphant victory they achieved that glorious Revolution, which, under different auspices, might have been branded as a traitorous Rebellion. This Revolution, however, in dissolving the former governments, did not dissolve the former Societies; and years before it was perfected, the Revolt had taken place. No hope could be entertained of ultimate success to this Revolt, unless some new government should be established in the stead of that which had been dissolved, to order and direct proceedings, to sanction acts, to speak and to determine for all its members. But by whom, and for whom, was or could such an Institution as government, be then ordained and established here?

The general answer to this question is obvious. As all government supposes the pre-existence of some established Society, whose affairs it is designed to regulate, and the rules for the Civil conduct of whose members it is required to prescribe, therefore, by none other than some pre-existing and established Society can any government be created or ordained. Even when foreign force is the foundation of government (as is too often the case), still as such force can only be exerted by some established Society over the will of some other Society, or some part of it, when this force is employed with success, the victor Society, while dissolving