loyalty to pre-existing duties, these duties thus confessed
by the oath are evidence of principal and agent, insisted upon by the imposer, and admitted by the taker, which suffices to refute the idea borrowed from monarchy, that our
government is our sovereignty; and also to demonstrate
that our sovereignty resides elsewhere. The punishment
of rejection on a new election, is an additional proof that
our policy by the oaths of fealty, so far from contemplating
the idea of a loyalty of the swearer to himself, recognises a
superior invested with power to apply a remedy for the insufficiency of the oath. And though the insufficiency of this
remedy itself to compel obedience to instructions, is urged
as an argument against their force, yet it is of the same
weight with the assertion, that these oaths also are without
obligation, because the mode of compelling obedience to
them, is as imperfect as the mode of compelling obedience
to instructions. The imperfection of a remedy, is no argument against the right. The Saxon weregild, of fifty shillings, was a better security for the right of living, than an
empty periodical election would be for the right of living
free; yet the ability to pay the fine, so far from justifying
the right to murder, suggested the necessity of a better remedy. A moral code, can only be perfected, by providing
new remedies against crimes, when old ones become insufficient. The right to life is not destroyed, by an imperfect
remedy for its preservation; and if the oath of loyalty to
our sovereignty, with the punishment of rejection on a new
election, are imperfect remedies for preserving the sovereign right of instruction, new remedies, and not an abandonment of the right, can only preserve our moral code,
called political law.
As representation was intended to express, not to subvert publick opinion, our policy resorts to sundry expedients for making representatives the genuine organs of certain districts, and for preventing them from degenerating into representatives of themselves, or of their own consciences, vices or follies. This degeneracy is a subversion of the
