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said to be peculiar to any people or nation ; for it is undoubt- 

 edly true, that every government, which exists, is substantially 

 such a government as a majority of the subjects of it desire, 

 or to express it more accurately, such as the majority of the 

 subjects of it prefer to acquiesce in, rather than attempt to 

 change. 



Names, however, are not very important in this discussion. 

 Whatever we may call our institutions, we mean that system 

 of measures, which during the progress of centuries have been 

 inaugurated, established and improved, till individual liberty 

 of conscience, opinion and action have been secured to every 

 person. The limits of this discourse will not allow a full 

 enumeration of all the measures. Magna Charta and the 

 habeas corpus have undoubtedly a inost important place 

 among them. The foundation and distribution of the dif- 

 ferent powers of government, so that the branch, which 

 makes the laws, shall neither construe nor execute them, 

 and the branch, which executes, shall neither make nor con- 

 strue, and the branch, which construes, shall neither make 

 nor execute, thereby making a government of laws and not 

 of men, are also entitled to a high place in such an enu- 

 meration. Trial by jury also, though from obvious causes 

 of less value to us, than to those from whom we derived 

 it, is entitled to a conspicuous place ; but far above them 

 all and far transcending in importance any and perhaps 

 all other causes combined in creating, preserving and trans- 

 mitting popular institutions, is the proprietorship of land. 

 Next to that, is the town meeting. The ownership of land 

 has always been a badge of sovereignty. By the theory of 

 the British government, all sovereignty is in the King and by 

 the same theory all the lands in the kingdom are held by the 

 subject, either mediately or immediately, from the King, who 

 is the absolute owner, while the owner of the fee is entitled 

 to the use. 



That gigantic system of institutions, or regulations, or gov- 

 ernment, or whatever it mav be called which, under the name 



