Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/447

1787.] of some among us; and for inviting into the legislative service those generous and benevolent characters who will do justice to each other's merit, by carving out offices and rewards for it. In the present state of American morals and manners, few friends, it may be thought, will be lost to the plan, by the opportunity of giving premiums to a mercenary and depraved ambition.

Mr. MERCER. It is a first principle in political science, that, whenever the rights of property are secured, an aristocracy will grow out of it. Elective governments also necessarily become aristocratic, because the rulers, being few, can and will draw emoluments for themselves from the many. The governments of America will become aristocracies. They are so already. The public measures are calculated for the benefit of the governors, not of the people. The people are dissatisfied, and complain. They change their rulers, and the public measures are changed, but it is only a change of one scheme of emolument to the rulers, for another. The people gain nothing by it, but an addition of instability and uncertainty to their other evils. Governments can only be maintained by force or influence. The executive has not force: deprive him of influence, by rendering the members of the legislature ineligible to executive offices, and he becomes a mere phantom of authority. The aristocratic part will not even let him in for a share of the plunder. The legislature must and will be composed of wealth and abilities, and the people will be governed by a junto. The executive ought to have a council being members of both Houses. Without such an influence, the war will be between the aristocracy and the people. He wished it to be between the aristocracy and the executive. Nothing else can protect the people against those speculating legislatures which are now plundering them throughout the United States.

Mr. GERRY read a resolution of the legislature of Massachusetts, passed before the act of Congress recommending the Convention, in which her deputies were instructed not to depart from the rotation established in the fifth article of the Confederation, nor to agree, in any case, to give to the members of Congress a capacity to hold offices under the government. This, he said, was repealed in consequence of the act of Congress, with which the state thought it proper to comply in an unqualified manner. The sense of the state, however, was still the same. He could not think, with Mr. Pinckney, that the disqualification was degrading. Confidence is the road to tyranny. As to ministers and ambassadors, few of them were necessary. It is the opinion of a great many, that they ought to be discontinued on our part, that none may be sent among us; and that source of influence shut up. If the Senate were to appoint ambassadors, as seemed to be intended, they will multiply embassies for their own sakes. He was not so fond of those productions as to wish to establish nurseries for them. If they are once appointed, the House of Representatives will be obliged to provide salaries for them, whether they approve of the measures or not. If men will