ciated, political and moral being, or these rights can neither exist, be held, or exercised.
The first species of capacity we assign to the people, operates between them and governments; the second, between governments and individuals, and between citizens. It is our policy to subject the whole field of this second capacity to legislation, and to exclude it from the whole field of the first. Law is allowed to regulate right and wrong in the latter cases, but not between the nation and its government. It cannot form a new government. The right to do this being held by nations, and not by governments or individuals, is evidence that nations hold rights in a moral and social capacity, not subject to law. A form of government being anterior to law, cannot be created by it; and the social rights of nations, cannot be destroyed by political laws, concealed under municipal titles, if law cannot create a form of government.
An unsubjected sovereignty, composed of subjected individuals, is the supposed inconsistency upon which the objection rests.
And yet the same inconsistency, if it be one, exists in the system of government, chiefly admired by the objectors themselves. The British sovereignty is unsubjected, and is composed of subjected individuals. Every member of the parliament of which this sovereignty is composed, including the king himself, is subject to municipal law. Where then is the absurdity, inconsistency or impolicy, of composing a sovereignty of subjects? It is, in fact, the common and plain case, of an individual, holding corporate rights, and owing corporate duties; or of a corporation, which governs its members, and yet is governed by them.
The idea, that a nation must necessarily be divided between sovereignty and subjection, to form a government, allotting one or a few to the first principle, and the mass of the people to the second, is precisely the barbarous opinion, which has always made tyrants and slaves. The whole merit of the British system, consists in a partial refutation of
