,
independent, equal, sovereign individuals. Society is a congress of
sovereigns, in which no one has authority over another, and no one can
be rightfully forced to submit to any decree against his will. In such
a congress the rule of the majority is manifestly improper,
illegitimate, and invalid, unless adopted by unanimous consent.

But this is not all. The individual is always the equal of himself,
and if the government derives its powers from the consent of the
governed, he governs in the government, and parts with none of his
original sovereignty. The government is not his master, but his agent,
as the principal only delegates, not surrenders, his rights and powers
to the agent. He is free at any time he pleases to recall the powers
he has delegated, to give new instructions, or to dismiss him. The
sovereignty of the individual survives the compact, and persists
through all the acts of his agent, the government. He must, then, be
free to withdraw from the compact whenever be judges it advisable.
Secession is perfectly legitimate if government is simply a contract
between equals. The disaffected, the criminal, the thief the
government would send to prison, or the murderer it would hang, would
be very likely to revoke his consent, and to secede from the state.
Any number of individuals large enough to count a majority among
themselves, indisposed to pay the government taxes, or to perform the
military service exacted, might hold a convention, adopt a secession
ordinance, and declare themselves a free, independent, sovereign state,
and bid defiance to the tax-collector and the provost-marshall, and
that, too, without forfeiting their estates or changing their domicile.
Would the government employ military force to coerce them back to their
allegiance? By what right? Government is their agent, their creature,
and no man owes allegiance to his own agent, or creature.

The compact could bind only temporarily, and could at any moment be
dissolved. Mr. Jefferson saw this, and very consistently maintained
that one generation has no power to bind another; and, as if this was
not enough, he asserted the right of revolution, and gave it as his
opinion that in every nation a revolution once in every generation is
desirable, that is, according to his reckoning, once every nineteen
years. The doctrine that one generation has no power to bind its
successor is not only a logical conclusion from the theory that
governme