" This
confounds, in a manner equally mischievous and stupid, the origin of a
government from the people with its continuance in their hands. I
believe that no such doctrine has ever been heard of in any public act
of any government whatsoever, until it was adopted (I think from the
writings of Rousseau) by the French Assemblies, who have made it the
basis of their Constitution at home, and of the matter of their
apostolate in every country. These and other wild declarations of
abstract principle, Mr. Fox says, are in themselves perfectly right and
true; though in some cases he allows the French draw absurd consequences
from them. But I conceive he is mistaken. The consequences are most
logically, though most mischievously, drawn from the premises and
principles by that wicked and ungracious faction. The fault is in the
foundation.
39. Before society, in a multitude of men, it is obvious that
sovereignty and subjection are ideas which cannot exist. It is the
compact on which society is formed that makes both. But to suppose the
people, contrary to their compacts, both to give away and retain the
same thing is altogether absurd. It is worse, for it supposes in any
strong combination of men a power and right of always dissolving the
social union; which power, however, if it exists, renders them again as
little sovereigns as subjects, but a mere unconnected multitude. It is
not easy to state for what good end, at a time like this, when the
foundations of all ancient and prescriptive governments, such as ours,
(to which people submit, not because they have chosen them, but because
they are born to them,) are undermined by perilous theories, that Mr.
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