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complained of it it as an indecency offered to his person and character. And, indeed, that Kings should imagine themselves the final causes, for which men were made, and societies were formed, and Governments were instituted, will cease to be a matter of wonder or surprise, when we find that lawyers, and statesmen, and philosophers, have taught or favoured principles, which necessarily lead to the same conclusion. Another instance, equally strong, but still more astonishing, is drawn from the British Government, as described by Sir William Blackstone and his followers. As described by him and them, the British is a despotic Government. It is a Government without a people. In that Government, as so described, the sovereignty is possessed by the Parliament: In the Parliament; therefore, the supreme and absolute authority is vested: In the Parliament resides that incontrolable [sic] and despotic power, which, in all Governments, must reside somewhere. The constituent parts of the Parliament are the King’s Majesty, the Lord’s Spiritual, the Lord’s Temporal, and the Commons. The King and these three Estates together form the great corporation or body politic of the Kingdom. All these sentiments are sound; the last expressions are found verbatim in the commentaries upon the laws of England. The Parliament form the great body politic of England! What, then, or where, are the ? ''Nothing! No where!'' They are not so much as even the “baseless fabric of a vision!” From legal contemplation they totally disappear! Am I not warranted in saying, that, if this is a just description; a Government, so and justly so described, is a despotic Government? Whether this description is or is not a just one, is a question of very different import.

In the United States, and in the several States, which compose the Union, we go not so far: but still we go one step farther than we ought to go in this unnatural and inverted order of things. The states, rather than the, for whose sakes the States exist, are frequently the objects which attract and arrest our principal attention. This, I believe, has produced much of the confusion and perplexity, which have appeared in several proceedings and several publications on state-politics, and on the politics, too, of the United States. Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? “The United States,” instead of the “People of the United States,” is the toast given. This is not politically correct. The toast is meant to present to view the first great object in the Union: It presents only the second: It presents only the artificial person, instead of the natural persons, who spoke it into existence. A State I fully