Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/434

mind cannot embraee that which has no limits: but specified and limited power, can easily be divided, and its effects foreseen. A nation, possessed of a mountain of gold, which should bestow the whole upon three ministers, trusting to their broils for its liberty, would pursue the old policy; by keeping the mass of its mountain, and entrusting agents with occasional sums, to be employed for its use, the new. The property in power, claimed by orders, causes their efforts for its increase; and these efforts constantly produce the incurable defect of that system, by proving the point upon which it rests its value to be unattainable. Agents, pretending to no such property, are not exposed to the same temptation; nor can their frauds and usurpations avail themselves of specious but spurious pretensions. The abuses of the old policy will therefore often find refuge in honest opinion; the inexorable and patriotick adversary of those committed under the new. Every deduction of power from a compact between a nation and its government, is incompatible with the right of self government; nor can a policy which admits the first, be founded in the same principles with that which asserts the second. No contractor, with the right of self government, can exist. A social compact, which is only an union of individuals, for the end of creating a government, ceases on the accomplishment of this end. The political society created by a constitution, is the only existing society, and the government is its agent; but under the natural individual right of self government, this political society itself may be dissolved. Until dissolved, it is the master of the government, or the real political sovereignty; but the natural right of self government, is superior to any political sovereignty. The ancient notion of a social compact between nations and their governments or monarchs, alone sufficed to corrupt them. A right of construction being involved in the character of a party to this imaginary social compact, it might easily be modelled into an inexhaustible treasury of power, by the party always active and able to mould it into any form ; whilst the partly