Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/218

 step they would not only forego a rapid accumulation of strength, but would incur the danger of converting fellow citizens into the most powerful enemies. They would lose that important branch of revenue, which arises from the sale of public lands, and they would no longer participate in the fur trade.

To infer the instability of the American republic from the frequency of revolutions in Europe, is altogether preposterous. A different state of society, and the difference of the political institutions to be compared, remove that parity of condition essential to analogical deduction. The executive power in America, does not extend to declaring war at pleasure; nor to dissolving the legislature. The president, whose term of service is only four years, has not the means nor the motives for family aggrandizement which prevail under hereditary succession. The members of the House of Representatives have their seats from the universal suffrage of the people; and the senators get their dignity and seats from the representatives in State Assemblies, who are themselves popularly elected, and who cannot promote obnoxious men without incurring public odium and future exclusion. The representation is equally distributed. Placemen and pensioners {186} are effectually debarred from being members of either house; under these conditions the few have it not in their power to dictate to the many. Ambitious projects, such as disfigure the histories of other countries, are precluded. Accessions of territory are not obtained by conquest, but by purchase. The object sought in these treaties is the right of soil; and not the power of taxing or enslaving men. No yoke is imposed but that upon the labouring steer. The domestic policy of the United States exhibits twenty-four republics, each having its own constitution, without