is land, do constitute and appoint this to be our system and
form of Government." The Government has assumed to constitute itself,
but it never was constituted by the people, in whom alone the right of
constituting resides.

I will here recite the preamble to the Federal Constitution of the
United States of America. I have shewn in the Second Part of _Rights
of Man_, the manner by which the Constitution was formed and afterwards
ratified; and to which I refer the reader. The preamble is in the
following words:

"We, the people, of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for
common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
constitution for the United States of America."

Then follow the several articles which appoint the manner in which the
several component parts of the Government, legislative and executive,
shall be elected, and the period of their duration, and the powers they
shall have: also, the manner by which future additions, alterations,
or amendments, shall be made to the constitution. Consequently, every
improvement that can be made in the science of government, follows in
that country as a matter of order. It is only in Governments founded on
assumption and false principles, that reasoning upon, and investigating
systems and principles of Government, and shewing their several
excellencies and defects, are termed libellous and seditious. These
terms were made part of the charge brought against Locke, Hampden, and
Sydney, and will continue to be brought against all good men, so long as
bad government shall continue.

The Government of this country has been ostentatiously giving challenges
for more than an hundred years past, upon what it called its own
excellence and perfection. Scarcely a King's Speech, or a Parliamentary
Speech, has been uttered, in which this glove has not been thrown, till
the world has been insulted with their challenges. But it now appears
that all this was vapour and vain boasting, or that it was intended to
conceal abuses and defects, and hush the people into taxes. I have taken
the challenge up, and in behalf of the public have shewn, in a fair,
open, and candid manner, both the radical and practical defects of the
system; when, lo! those champions of the Civil List have fled away,
and sent the Attorney-General to d