or particular governments, however, but in the People; and who The People are, I have already shewn.
This Sovereign People might, if they pleased, have exerted directly all the powers which, in the exercise of their Sovereign will, they have seen fit to delegate to others. If they had done so, we should have had a pure Democracy, where, as in a pure Despotism, the Sovereignty and the government are united.
But they did not choose to do so; and thought it wiser to establish a Representative Democracy. It results from the very nature of this form of government, that the Sovereignty remains with the People, while the government is in the magistracy, their Representatives, agents, and servants. Grouping all these magistrates into two great classes, of Federal and States agents, the Sovereign People have said to one of these classes, as assign to you the duty of making treaties for us, etc. To the other class they have said, we assign to you the duty of punishing crimes committed against us.
In assigning these different duties to their different agents, however, the Sovereign People neither impair their own Sovereignty, nor create one of those classes of magistrates superior to the other; because, they are all but servants, acting in virtue of the power which each derives from their common master, and for his benefit. Nor is it possible to institute any comparison between the powers granted to these different classes of agents, in order to determine, in that way, which is the higher; because, things totally unlike cannot be compared. Is the power to prescribe in what way alone property may be acquired, held, or transmitted, greater or less, than the power to make Treaties? Is the power to preserve or take away liberty greater, or less, than the power to declare war? Is the power to forfeit life greater, or less, than the power to levy duties and imposts? If we pursue this scheme a little further, and descending from the two groups of Federal and State agents, examine the constituent parts of each of them, the subject will become more plain. Thus, the Sovereign People, in their different charters, or laws for the government of their representative agents, say to their Legislative servants, in either class, you shall make laws for us upon certain subjects; to their Judicial servants, you shall judge and decide for the parties before you,
