The great object of terror and suspicion to the peo-
ple of the thirteen provinces was power; not Merely
power in the hands of a president or a prince, of one
assembly or of several, of many citizens or of few, but
power in the abstract, wherever it existed and under
whatever name it was known. "There is and must
be," said Blackstone, "in all forms of government,
however they began or by what right soever they
exist, a supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled
authority, in which the jura summi imperii, or the
rights of sovereignty, reside;" and Parliament is
the place "where that absolute despotic power which
must in all governments reside somewhere is intrusted
by the Constitution of the British kingdoms." Su-
preme, irresistible authority must exist somewhere in
every government -- was the European political belief;
and England solved her problem by intrusting it to a
representative assembly to be used according to the
best judgment of the nation. America, on the other
hand, asserted that the principle was not true; that
no such supreme power need exist in a government;
that in the American government none such should be
allowed to exist, because absolute power in any form
was inconsistent with freedom, and that the new
government should start from the idea that the public
liberties depended upon denying uncontrolled authority
to the political system in its parts or in its whole.

Every one knows with what logic this theory was
worked out in the mechanism of the new republic.
Not only were rights reserved to the people never to

-368-