variable so far as relates to the prince and nobility; but the slavery of the people is lasting. This happens in all feudal governments.
“Sometimes the dispute is between the bulk of the people, and a few leading men, who having been honored with the confidence of their fellow-citizens betray their trust, grasp at power, and endeavor to establish themselves in permanent superiority. Their success constitutes an aristocracy, which is generally a most oppressive government, although often for the sake of blinding the people, it is dignified with the name of a republic. Indeed every constitution that has hitherto existed under that name, has partaken more or less of the nature of an aristocracy; and it is this aristocratical leaven that has generally occasioned disorders and tumults in every republican government; and has so far brought the name into disrepute, (even in America, where the sovereignty is confessedly in the people,) that it is becoming a received opinion, that a commonwealth, in proportion as it approaches to democracy, wants those springs of efficacious authority, which are necessary to the production of regularity and good order, and degenerates into anarchy and confusion. This is commonly imputed to the capricious humor of the people, who are said to run riot with too much liberty, to be always unreasonable in their demands, and never satisfied, but when ruled with a rod of iron.
“These are the common place arguments against a democratic constitution. They are the pleas of ambition to introduce aristocracy, monarchy, and every species of tyranny and oppression. Unfortunate indeed for the liberties of mankind, if it be true, that to render them orderly, it is necessary to render them slaves. However generally this position may have been admitted, we may venture to deny that it is an inference fairly drawn from experience. Without better proof than has been adduced, we cannot justly admit that the people at large are capricious or unreasonable, or that a democratic government will be productive of disorder or tumult. The blame in such cases is indeed generally laid on the people, but it is easy to see that the charge is unjust. So far from being unreasonable in their demands, there is perhaps no one instance in history, where they have ventured at once to push their claims to the full extent of reason, and to make an ample demand of justice. They rarely complain at once of more than one or two grievances. When these are removed, they become sensible of others. In proportion as they acquire more freedom, they gain more strength of mind, and independence of spirit. They see further into the nature and extent of their own rights, and call louder for a restoration of them. This is called turbulence and caprice, but is in reality only a requisition of justice; which being either refused, or but partially and unwillingly granted, it is to the oppressors, and not the oppressed, that the mischief is to be imputed.
“It is thus, I apprehend, and not otherwise,” continues the same writer, “that a government approaching to democracy is apt to be disorderly. The people have a right to complain, so long as they are robbed of any portion of their freedom; and if their complaints are not heard, they have a right to use any method of enfranchising themselves. On the contrary, I am inclined to believe, that in general the people are pretty easily satisfied when no injustice is intended towards them; and if it be allowed to reason a priori in such a case, I conclude that a real democracy, as it is the only equitable constitution, so it would be of all the most happy, and perhaps, of all the most quiet and orderly.”
I shall conclude this summary with remarking, that if ever there was a country in which a fair experiment could be made of the efficacy, advantages, duration, and happiness to be derived from a democratic government, that country is United America.
SECTION XII.
Political bodies, whether great or small, if they are constituted by a people formerly independent, and under no civil subjection, or by those who justly claim independence from any civil power they were formerly subject to, have the civil supremacy in themselves, and are in a state of equal right and liberty with respect to all other states, whether great or small. No regard is to be had in this matter to names; whether the body politic be called a kingdom, an empire, a principality, a dukedom, a country, a republic, or free town. If it can exercise justly all the essential parts of civil power within itself independently of any other person or body politic, and no other hath any right to rescind or annul its acts, it has the civil supremacy, how small soever its territory may be, or the number of its people, and has all the rights of an independent state.23
This independence of states, and their being distinct political bodies from each other, is not obstructed by any alliance or confederacies whatsoever, about exercising jointly any parts of the supreme power; such as those of peace and war, in leagues offensive and defensive. Two states, notwithstanding such treaties, are separate bodies and independent.24
They are then, only, deemed politically united when some one person, or council, is constituted with a right to exercise some essential powers for both, and to hinder either from exercising them separately. If any person or council is empowered to exercise all these essential powers for both, they are then one state: such is the state of England and Scotland, since the act of union made at the beginning of the eighteenth century, whereby the two kingdoms were incorporated into one, all parts of the supreme power of both kingdoms being henceforward united and vested in the three estates of the realm of Great Britain: by which entire coalition, though both kingdoms retain their ancient laws and usages in many respects, they are as effectually united and incorporated, as the several petty kingdoms, which composed the heptarchy, were before that period.
But when only a portion of the supreme civil power is vested in one person, or council for both, such as that of peace and war, or of deciding controversies between different states, or their subjects, whilst each state within itself exercise other parts of the supreme power, independently of all the others; in this case they are called systems of states: which Burlamaqui defines to be an assemblage of perfect governments, strictly united by some common bond; so that they seem to make but a single body with respect to those affairs which interest them in common, though each preserves its sovereignty full and entire, independently of all the others. … And in this case, he adds, the confederate states engage to each other only to exercise with common consent, certain parts of the sovereignty, especially those which relate to their mutual defense, against foreign enemies. But each of the confederates retains an entire liberty of exercising as it thinks proper, those parts of the sovereignty, which are not mentioned in the treaty of union, as parts that ought to be exercised in common. And of this nature is the American confederacy, in which each state has resigned the exercise of certain parts of the supreme civil power which they possessed before (except in common with the other states included in the confederacy) reserving to themselves all their former powers, which are not delegated to the United States by the common bond of union.
A visible distinction, and not less important than obvious, occurs to our observation in comparing these different kinds of union. The kingdoms of England and Scotland are united into one kingdom; and the two contracting states by such an incorporate union are, in the opinion of Judge Blackstone, totally annihilated, without any power of revival; and a third arises from their conjunction, in which all the rights of sovereignty, and particularly that of legislation, are vested. From whence he expresses a doubt whether any infringements of the fundamental and essential conditions of the union, would of itself dissolve the union of those kingdoms, though he readily admits, that in the case of a federate alliance, such an infringement would certainly rescind the compact between the confederate states. In the United States of America, on the contrary, each state retains its own antecedent form of government; its own laws, subject to the alteration and control of its own legislatures, only; its own executive officers, and council of state: its own courts of judicature, its own judges; its own magistrates, civil officers, and officers of the militia; and, in short, its own civil state, or body politic, in every respect whatsoever. And by the express declaration of the twelfth article25 of the amendments to the constitution, the powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, or prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. In Great Britain, a new civil state is created by the annihilation of two antecedent civil states; in the American States, a general federal council, and administrative, is provided, for the joint exercise
