endeavoured to eradicate it by establishing governments invested with specified and limited powers. But the evil, restless and persevering, requires a perpetual activity and jealousy on the part of nations, to keep it from shooting up new scions. Protean and plausible, its shrubs must be grubbed up as they appear, or they will soon grow into trees. As the love of wealth is common to all civilized men, and governments are composed of men, laws to protect the property of nations against governments are as necessary, as laws to protect the property of one man against another. Jugurtha's exclamation against the government of Rome was foolish. The influence of avarice even at that early age was not a novelty. What ground then was there for surprise, because Rome was for sale?' The government exercised an absolute power over the national property. How then could he have doubted, whether this power could find purchasers? I discern no age, no country, no government, wherein these sales of the rights and properties of mankind have not abounded. Though the modes of this political traffick are multifarious, yet the result is as certain as a mathematical conclusion; and a remedy which can reach all modes can only be effectual.

Lycurgus, sensible of the cause by which governments were corrupted, excluded it entirely; and surrendered the amenities of life, the acquisition of knowledge, the elegancies of taste, the fine arts, the circle of the sciences, and almost civilization itself; because he computed a loss so enormous as a cheap sacrifice, to get rid of an evil so calamitous. The Athenians, unwilling to surrender the blessings of life, but sensible of the evil, endeavoured to restrain it, by the ineffectual expedient of the ostracism. The Romans long resisted the avarice of the senate, vainly depended upon elective tribunes to abolish frauds in which they participated, and at length fled from the avarice of many, to the avarice of one. The ignorant northern conquerors saw no better remedy against oppression, than to yield the utmost scope to the principle of sovereignty, by an absolute transfer of themselves and their property to feudal kings and barons. As the Europeans became more enlightened, they became sensible of the tyranny of avarice, and after a series of ineffectual struggles to emancipate themselves from its grasp, have only changed the form of its operation, without

diminishing its oppressions. England, the most successful in theory, has nothing to boast of in practice; and even the improvements in the form of her government, have become instruments for avarice, by which it has effected as much at least as the feudal system could accomplish. By the confidence derived from representation, united with the power of a sovereignty in the government over property, avarice is enabled to draw from the people all they can possibly spare. Thus they owe to the wisest political discovery, the greatest political evil; and representation itself, the last refuge of hope, is contaminated and rendered abortive, by its union with a sovereign power over property. The means used by a sovereignty in the English government, are monitors to us. They consist of a long catalogue of exclusive privileges, and legal donations, bestowed by the power of sovereignty, and taken from private property. The nation, tutored by the domestick usurpations of sovereignty, have been taught to believe, that it was as right to sacrifice foreign nations to its own avarice, as it was, that themselves should be sacrificed to the avarice of domestick combinations; and have suffered a second series of calamities from the same unjust principle, because the spoils of oppression are always intercepted by the instruments for inflicting it. The same thing arises universally from the most specious domestick combinations, under pretence that they will advance the national good. The managers of the pretext absorb its fruits, and the majority of the nation get regret for their loss. The people of England have gazed at the wealth amassed by the bounties, the pensions, the monopolies, the exclusive privileges, the tithes, and the contracts of their sovereign government, until, being undeluded by the argument of sensation, and deceived no longer in the promises of projects to diffuse blessings, they are only restrained from subverting society itself by the force of a mercenary army.

A love of property is the chief basis of civil society; but like all other passions it ought to be regulated and restrained, to extract from it the benefits it can produce, and to counteract the evils it can inflict. All honest politicians have acknowledged the necessity for constitutional restrictions, to curb the fanaticism of ambition; and as the love of wealth is a passion of wider influence, being often even the primary motive by which

ambition itself is awakened, that also demanded constitutional restrictions, at least as forcible, to operate upon the individuals who composed a government. If a society is so constituted, as to invest a government with a sovereign power over property, restrictions upon the passion of ambition must become abortive, because the government will possess the means by which it is excited and nourished.

The distribution of wealth can only be regulated by industry, by fraud or by force. Fraud and force are of equal weight in the scales of justice. Theoretically, they are of the same character; practically, fraud has been by far the most pernicious in distributing property. Yet pecuniary fanaticism or exclusive privileges, can abhor a resort to force, and admire a resort to fraud for the same purpose. What could be objected to the exercise of a sovereignty in the people, forcibly to distribute property? Nothing stronger than may be objected to a sovereignty in the government, to do it fraudulently. If pecuniary morality, or the freedom of property is the basis of a good government; and if a distribution of property by the power of the government or even of the people would designate a bad one; no remedy which would reach only half the evil, could make the government good. If it deprived the people of this pernicious power and gave it to the government, or if it deprived the government of the power, and gave it to the people, the social principles would either way be imperfect, because neither expedient would be bottomed upon the natural right of mankind to the fruits of their own labour. We must extract principles from facts, and the experience of the whole world supplies them in abundance. England alone, the admired model of a sovereignty in government over property, supplies facts enough to establish the principles, and to justify the conclusions for which I have contended; and would prove, that an artificial sovereignty for taking away that which belongs to others, cannot be better, than a natural sovereignty, for keeping that which belongs to ourselves.

The use of a hyperbolical word, suggested by a laudable zeal, has exposed philosophers to some degree of ridicule; and their exertions for benefiting mankind, have been considerably counteracted, by insisting upon our "perfectibility." If the exaggerated word "sovereignty" can be successfully used to disencum

ber our governments in general, or the federal government in particular, of the restrictions imposed upon them by the people; it would be peculiarly hard, that one extravagant word should arrest the improvement of man's state, and also that another should deprive him of the improvements he has made; though both as being hyperbolical, would seem to merit an equal share of ridicule.

Suppose, however, we admit the hyperbolical claim of sovereignty to divine origin, and concede the consequence, that as its origin is divine, its powers must be boundless; it will then be necessary to enquire upon whom the splendid donation has been bestowed, whether on kings, on governments, or on the people; on one man, on a few men, or on all men. Now, as the two first of these competitors are artificial beings, and the last only natural beings; and as we know of no other channel, except that of nature, through which this divine boon has been conveyed ; and as mental and bodily faculties, common to all men, are the only evidences of it; the enquiry would seem very clearly to terminate in the conclusion, that the rodomontade "I alone am king of me" was considerably more modest, than that other, now contended for, " I alone am king of you."

This is a concession conformable to the doctrine of the highest-toned advocates for sovereignty which have ever appeared; but it would be uncandid to confine the enquiry to a ground which would only propose for our election, liberty on one hand, or the utmost conceivable degree of despotism on the other. The modern and more moderate advocates of sovereignty have ceased to contend for its divine origin; and have rather struggled for its powers, than defended the genealogy so much insisted upon by their predecessors. They seem tacitly, but by no means plainly, to admit that sovereignty is not a divine, but a conventional right. They must assume one of these grounds in asserting the sovereignty of governments, and as the latter is the strongest, I will yield it to them. Having gotten upon this ground, chosen by the advocates for sovereignty, I now ask them to shew me the conventional sovereignty for which they contend. Far from discerning any glimpse of the powers of sovereignty in our constitutions, I see nothing but long catalogues of limitations, restrictions, balances and

divisions of power, and if this young political family can be ground back into the old hoary traitor sovereignty, in the mill of construction, it will be just reversing the ancient prodigy of grinding old men into young ones.

I do not however admit that " sovereignty and the right of self-government" are equivalent things, except it is supposed that both reside in the people, and neither in a government. Under this supposition it follows, that sovereignty or self-government are natural rights, and that governments cannot participate of either, because their rights are all conventional. This opinion is so firmly fixed in our country, however in some cases exterior politeness may subsist with internal contempt, or verbal concession with practical disavowal, that I may safely assume the principle, that the right of self-government, and sovereignty also if it came from God, resides in the people. This being a natural right, like the right to our own labour, no existing generation can deprive another of it, and convey it to kings or governments, upon any better ground, than it could decree, that the heads of all future generations, as fast as they arrived to manhood, should be taken away from them. If no conventional act can deprive man of life, liberty and property, and if sovereignty in governments would have this effect, it follows that sovereignty cannot be conventionally established; and that whether gentlemen deduce it from this source by hyperbolical inferences, or from a divine origin, it is still a useless, foreign and perplexing word to our political system. But supposing the rights of sovereignty and of self-government to be inseparably united with each other; and that a number of men assembled to exercise one right, are also invested with the other; yet I see no reason why they may not establish a government with limited powers, and retain this imaginary sovereignty if it is real; and instead of uniting with these limited powers, the indefinite powers of sovereignty, agree that they shall be subordinate to their will, restricted by their constitutional mandate, and liable to their revision. This was actually done in the establishment of all our constitutions; and as these conventional acts, far from bestowing sovereignty on governments, have actually retained it in the hands of the people, if it existed at all, and if sovereignty may have a conventional origin, it is so deposited, I shall therefore disregard the distinction between