Status Updates From Sovereignty, RIP

In 1775 Plenty of contemporaries thought sovereignty made people stupid. "The spirit of blindness and infatuation is gone forth," lamented Whig churchman Jonathan Shipley. "We are hurrying wildly on without any fixed de-sign, without any important object. We pursue a vain phantom of unlimited sovereignty, which was not made for man; and reject the solid advantages of a moderate, useful and intelligible authority.

‘the stakes’ in George Washington's acknowledgment after the tea party: "I shall not undertake to say where the Line between Great Britain and the Colonies should be drawn. ... But the Crisis is arrived when we must assert our Rights, or Submit to every Imposition that can be heap'd upon us, till custom and use, will make us as tame, & abject Slaves, as the Blacks we Rule over with such arbitrary Sway."

This word only looms so large in our imagination because the spirit of the French, full of royal superstitions, felt under an obligation to endow it with all the heritage of pomp and absolute power which made the usurped sovereignties shine.
Pleople seem to say, with a kind of patriotic pride, that if the sovereignty of great kings is so powerful and so terrible, the sovereignty of a great people ought to surpass it.