Page:Democracy in America (Reeve).djvu/254

 which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our government.”—(Federalist, No. 73.)

And again, in No. 62 of the same work, he observes: “The facility and excess of law-making seem to be the diseases to which our governments are most liable.******* The mischievous effects of the mutability in the public councils arising from a rapid succession of new members, would fill a volume; every new election in the states is found to change one half of the representatives. From this change of men must proceed a change of opinions and of measures which forfeits the respect and confidence of other nations, poisons the blessings of liberty itself, and diminishes the attach- ment and reverence of the people toward a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity.” Jefferson himself, the greatest democrat whom the democracy of America has as yet produced, pointed out the same evils.

“The instability of our laws,” he said in a letter to Madison, “is really a very serious inconvenience. I think we ought to have obviated it by deciding that a whole year should always be allowed to elapse between the bringing in of a bill and the final passing of it. It should afterward be discussed and put to the vote without the possibility of making any alteration in it; and if the circumstances of the case required a more speedy decision, the question should not be decided by a simple majority, but by a majority of at least two thirds of both houses.”

Simple Exterior of the American public Officers.—No official Costume.—All public Officers are remunerated.—Political Consequences of this System.—No public Career exists in America.—Result of this. officers in the United States are commingled with the crowd of citizens; they have neither palaces, nor guards, nor ceremonial costumes. This simple exterior of the persons in authority is connected, not only with the peculiarities of the American character, but with the fundamental principles of that society. In the