Charters

by James Madison

Charters.

In Europe charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example, and France has followed it, of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness. We look back already, with astonishment, at the daring outrages committed by despotism on the reason and the rights of man; we look forward with joy to the period when it shall be despoiled of all its usurpations, and bound forever in the chains with which it had loaded its miserable victims.

In proportion to the value of this revolution; in proportion to the importance of instruments, every word of which decides a question between power and liberty; in proportion to the solemnity of acts proclaiming the will, and authenticated by the seal of the people, the only earthly source of authority, ought to be the vigilance with which they are guarded by every citizen in private life, and the circumspection with which they are executed by every citizen in public trust.

As compacts, charters of government are superior in obligation to all others, because they give effect to all others. As trusts, none can be more sacred, because they are bound on the conscience by the religious sanctions of an oath. As metes and bounds of government, they transcend all other landmarks, because every public usurpation is an encroachment on the private right, not of one, but of all.

The citizens of the United States have peculiar motives to support the energy of their constitutional charters. Having originated the experiment, their merit will be estimated by its success.

The complicated form of their political system, arising from the partition of government between the States and the Union, and from the separations and subdivisions of the several departments in each, requires a more than common reverence for the authority which is to preserve order through the whole.

Being republicans, they must be anxious to establish the efficacy of popular charters in defending liberty against power, and power against licentiousness, and in keeping every portion of power within its proper limits; by this means discomfiting the partisans of anti-republican contrivances for the purpose.

All power has been traced up to opinion. The stability of all Governments and security of all rights may be traced to the same source. The most arbitrary government is controlled where the public opinion is fixed. The despot of Constantinople dares not lay a new tax because every slave thinks he ought not. The most systematic governments are turned by the slightest impulse from their regular path, when the public opinion no longer holds them in it. We see at this moment the Executive Magistrate of Great Britain exercising, under the authority of the representatives of the people, a legislative power over the West India commerce.

How devoutly is it to be wished, then, that the public opinion of the United States should be enlightened; that it should attach itself to their governments as delineated in the great charters, derived not from the usurped power of kings, but from the legitimate authority of the people; and that it should guarantee, with a holy zeal, these political scriptures from every attempt to add to or diminish from them. Liberty and order will never be perfectly safe until a trespass on the constitutional provisions for either shall be felt with the same keenness that resents an invasion of the dearest rights, until every citizen shall be an Argus to espy and an Aegeon to avenge the unhallowed deed.

January 18.