and helpless
spectators of the commonweal, "wholly unconcerned in the government of
themselves."

Of the electors the hap is but little better. They are often far from
unanimity in their choice; and where the numbers approach to equality,
almost half must be governed not only without, but against their choice.

How any man can have consented to institutions established in distant
ages, it will be difficult to explain. In the most favourite residence
of liberty, the consent of individuals is merely passive; a tacit
admission, in every community, of the terms which that community grants
and requires. As all are born the subjects of some state or other, we
may be said to have been all born consenting to some system of
government. Other consent than this the condition of civil life does not
allow. It is the unmeaning clamour of the pedants of policy, the
delirious dream of republican fanaticism.

But hear, ye sons and daughters of liberty, the sounds which the winds
are wafting from the western continent. The Americans are telling one
another, what, if we may judge from their noisy triumph, they have but
lately discovered, and what yet is a very important truth: "That they
are entitled to life, liberty, and property; and that they have never
ceded to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose of either
without their consent."

While this resolution stands alone, the Americans are free from
singularity of opinion; their wit has not yet betrayed them to heresy.
While they speak as the naked sons of nature, they claim but what is
claimed by other men, and have withheld nothing but what all withhold.
They are here upon firm ground, behind entrenchments which never can be
forced.

Humanity is very uniform. The Americans have this resemblance to
Europeans, that they do not always know when they are well. They soon
quit the fortress, that could neither have been ruined by sophistry, nor
battered by declamation. Their next resolution declares, that "Their
ancestors, who first settled the colonies, were, at the time of their
emigration from the mother-country, entitled to all the rights,
liberties, and immunities of free and natural-born subjects within the
realm of England."

This, likewise, is true; but when this is granted, their boast of
original rights is at an end; they are no longer in a state of nature.
These lords of themselves, these kings of ME, these demigods of
independence sink down to colonists, governed