Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/67

 endeavor to make this more manifest by contracts, in showing what sovereignty is not. This is necessary, because, it is only be confounding Sovereignty with something else, that any difference has ever arisen, in the determination of the question which I have first proposed.—Sovereignty is not Government. If it was, as all Sovereignty is Supremacy, ever government under the Sun of necessity, would be an absolute and unchecked Despotism; nor could free government exist. But as Sovereignty and Government are not the same, we may readily discern, how it is, that although sovereignty is the same wherever it exists, yet governments are infinitely diversified. Sovereignty, like truth, is an indivisible unit. It may be enjoyed by one, or by many, at the same time, but then all the persons make but on Sovereign, as all the parceners make but one heir. Government being a mere delegation or assumption of power, jurisdiction and authority, each of which subjects are infinitely divisible, may have as many hues as the Chamelion, as many forms as Proteus.

Although sovereignty and government are distinct, easy separable, and, in modern times, often found separated, yet as the rights of sovereignty and the powers of government may, and for a long time did, co-exist, and in the same persons, the two became confounded; and it is always difficult to remove any error confirmed by long habit. Galileo suffered in a dungeon of the Inquisition, for presuming to demonstrate that the earth revolved around the sun, ad Sidney died on a scaffold as a Traitor, for daring to prove, that government was not of divine origin. It was reserved for American Statesmen to give a practical illustration f the great truths which he taught, by inducing their fellow citizens, while establishing government, to retain their own sovereignty unimpaired, and so to shew, that sovereignty and government were not only separable and distinct, but that they ought not ever to be again united in this land, by any who wish to be free. This is the true American System, which has been but little understood, and therefore has been but imperfectly imitated anywhere else, as yet.

Notwithstanding sovereignty and government are not the same, yet it is readily conceded, that where the rights of sovereignty are admitted to be possessed by any government, there the