r form a separate association
for that purpose, or be content to wait until they can make their views
intelligible to the people at large. They cannot claim or expect that
the whole people shall practise the folly of taking on trust their
pretended superior knowledge, and of committing blindly into their hands
all their own interests, liberties, and rights, to be disposed of on
principles, the justness of which the people themselves cannot
comprehend.

A government of the whole, therefore, must necessarily confine itself to
the administration of such principles of law as _all_ the people, who
contribute to the support of the government, can comprehend and see the
justice of. And it can be confined within those limits only by allowing
the jurors, who represent all the parties to the compact, to judge of
the law, and the justice of the law, in all cases whatsoever. And if any
justice be left undone, under these circumstances, it is a justice for
which the nature of the association does not provide, which the
association does not undertake to do, and which, as an association, it
is under no obligation to do.

The people at large, the unlearned and common people, have certainly an
indisputable right to associate for the establishment and maintenance of
such a government as _they themselves_ see the justice of, and feel the
need of, for the promotion of their own interests, and the safety of
their own rights, without at the same time surrendering all their
property, liberty, and rights into the hands of men, who, under the
pretence of a superior and incomprehensible knowledge of justice, may
dispose of such property, liberties, and rights, in a manner to suit
their own selfish and dishonest purposes.

If a government were to be established and supported _solely_ by that
portion of the people who lay claim to superior knowledge, there would
be some consistency in their saying that the common people should not be
received as jurors, with power to judge of the justice of the laws. But
so long as the whole people (or all the male adults) are presumed to be
voluntary parties to the government, and voluntary contributors to its
support, there is no consistency in refusing to any one of them more
than to another the right to sit as juror, with full power to decide for
himself whether any law that is proposed to be enforced in any
particular case, be within the objects of the association.

The conclusion, therefore, is, that, in