Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/181

.] they can stand the temptations of human nature, you are safe. If you have a good President, senators, and representatives, there is no danger. But can this be expected from human nature? Without real checks, it will not suffice that some of them are good. A good President, or senator, or representative, will have a natural weakness. Virtue will slumber.

The wicked will be continually watching: consequently you will be undone. Where are your checks? You have no hereditary nobility—an order of men to whom human eyes can be cast up for relief; for, says the Constitution, there is no title of nobility to be granted—which, by the by, would not have been so dangerous as the perilous cession of powers contained in this paper; because, as Montesquieu says, when you give titles of nobility, you know what you give; but when you give power, you know not what you give. If you say that, out of this depraved mass, you can collect luminous characters, it will not avail, unless this luminous breed will be propagated from generation to generation, and even then, if the number of vicious characters will preponderate, you are undone.

And that this will certainly be the case is, to my mind, perfectly clear. In the British government there are real balances and checks: in this system there are only ideal balances. Till I am convinced that there are actual efficient checks, I will not give my assent to its establishment. The President and senators have nothing to lose. They have not that interest in the preservation of the government that the king and lords have in England. They will, therefore, be regardless of the interests of the people. The Constitution will be as safe with one body as with two. It will answer every purpose of human legislation; How was the constitution of England when only the commons had the power? I need not remark, that it was the most unfortunate era when that country returned to king, lords, and commons, without sufficient responsibility in the king. When the commons of England, in the manly language which be came freemen, said to their king, You are our servant, then the temple of liberty was complete. From that noble source have we derived our liberty: that spirit of patriotic attachment to one's country, that zeal for liberty, and that enmity to tyranny, which signalized the then champions of liberty