Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/649

Charter was originally a monarchical mode of conveying to towns or mercantile associations, certain portions of civil liberty, eonsidered as valid, upon the ground that the liberties of the grantees belonged to the grantor, and were, therefore, subjects of sale, gift or barter. Upon this stock has been engrafted the idea, that law-charters were irrevocable, without considering that liberty, according to our policy, is not a subject of sale, gift or barter; or the property of the government. Though kings, according to the first opinion, might by charters, sell or give more liberty to some of their subjects than to others; and though such deeds ought to be considered as not within the power of one contracting party to vacate; yet it does not follow, according to the second, that our governments can do the same thing, or that charters made by them for privileges or monopolies, ought to be equally sacred. Liberty, by means of royal charters, crept into cities, and from these diffused many benefits over nations. That aristocracy should make this fact a precedent upon which to creep into our policy, is a striking illustration, either of its own ingenuity, or of its rival's ignorance. To draw a precedent in favorem mortis, out of one in favorem vitæ, and to pass off the deduction, as genuine, upon those to be killed by it, shews that logick itself deserves the character we have heard given to republican forins of government; and that Mr. Locke might have saved himself all the trouble he has taken about the human understanding, by subjecting it to the same definition. The fetters of bondage were gradually broken by the irrepealable charters of kings, and ought, therefore, to be gradually welded by the irrepealable laws of republicks; and frequent elections being necessary to enable nations to preserve liberty, the design ought to be defeated by the irrevocable laws of a single legislature, which may choose to destroy it. What but the corruption of hope, from the dreams of wealth poured by aristocratical artifice into the imagination of ignorance, can make such reasoning current? Thus alchymy is made to appear practicable, and soldiers are persuaded to make