Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/152

142 The idea and origin of election, have been generally, if act universally, defective, until the American revolution. In England, it is to this day a remnant of feudality, planted by prerogative. It is derived, not from the inherent natural right of self government, but from the gratuitous donation of a feudal monarch.

Ambition and avarice have been perpetually forming combinations, and practising devices for depriving men of their rights. Hence ensue struggles for redress; in the progress of which, if the usurpers find it prudent to relax, they artfully deal out these relaxations, not as rights independent of their pleasure, but as meritorious acts of grace and favour.

Accordingly, election or self government being a right fatal to usurpation, whenever some portion of it could no longer be withheld from the people, usurpers have laboured to defeat it, first, by restricting it to the idea of an indulgence; and, secondly, by contaminating it with destructive modifications.

The struggles between the people and nobles of Rome; the indulgence and modification of suffrage; the mode of voting, so as to bestow the decision on wealth or poverty; the inveterate parties created by this division; and the vast indefinite powers retained by the senate; were artifices of hereditary orders to contaminate election and defeat its effects.

By stratagem, also, has election been managed in England. It M as an indulgence of the kings. It was bestowed without rule, according to the suggestions of royal interest or ambition. And it is retained in its present corrupt state, to destroy its efficacy. It discloses no principle of right or justice, in origin, modification or practice. Why tiieu lias Mr. Adams estimated the elective principle by the examples of Rome and England, where it was bottomed upon notorious fraud? In America, the principle is better understood; it feels the dignity of a right; we have no hereditary orders (its natural enemy) to poison it;