A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 2, part 1: James Monroe
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 2, part 1: James Monroe
Monroe, James, 1758-1831; Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
The history of the world affords no such example of two separate and
independent governments established over the same people, nor can it
exist except in governments founded on the sovereignty of the people.
In monarchies and other governments not representative there can be no
such division of power. The government is inherent in the possessor;
it is his, and can not be taken from him without a revolution. In such
governments alliances and leagues alone are practicable. But with us
individuals count for nothing in the offices which they hold; that
is, they have no right to them. They hold them as representatives, by
appointment from the people, in whom the sovereignty is exclusively
vested. It is impossible to speak too highly of this system taken
in its twofold character and in all its great principles of two
governments, completely distinct from and independent of each other,
each constitutional, founded by and acting directly on the people, each
competent to all its purposes, administering all the blessings for which
it was instituted, without even the most remote danger of exercising
any of its powers in a way to oppress the people. A system capable
of expansion over a vast territory not only without weakening either
government, but enjoying the peculiar advantage of adding thereby new
strength and vigor to the faculties of both; possessing also this
additional advantage, that while the several States enjoy all the rights
reserved to them of separate and independent governments, and each is
secured by the nature of the Federal Government, which acts directly on
the people, against the failure of the others to bear their equal share
of the public burdens, and thereby enjoys in a more perfect degree all
the advantages of a league, it holds them together by a bond altogether
different and much stronger than the late Confederation or any league
that was ever known before--a bond beyond their control, and which can
not even be amended except in the mode prescribed by it. So great an
effort in favor of human happiness was never made before; but it became
those who made it. Established in the new hemisphere, descended from the
same ancestors, speaking the same language, having the same religion and
universal toleration, born equal and educated in the same principles of
free government, made independent by a common struggle and menaced by
the same dangers, ties existed between them which never applied before
to separate communities. They had every motive to bind them together
which could operate on the interests and affections of a generous,
enlightened, and virtuous people, and it affords inexpressible
consolation to find that these motives had their merited influence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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