Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/155

Rh yet engage two orders of rich and poor in perpetual hostilities in the United States ; but all ranks vote individually, interwoven and commixed; nor is it yet corrupted by commissions in armies, navies or churches, by loans or contracts, or by unequal representation and purchase. These are the corruptions, invented by political orders to destroy the efficacy of election, and these orders are the remedies proposed by Mr. Adams, for the evils of their own invention.

As in England, the national right of self government, is ever seized hy orders ; accordingly Judge Blackstone declares that "the parliament may change the nature of the government, without consulting the people;" because the orders composing it, consider themselves as composing the society, and the people as no longer entitled to the right of modifying their government, allowed by Mr. Adams to every society. Of this allowance, the futility in communion with orders, is thus demonstrated by the practice and principles of Mr. Adams's theory, in the instance of England.

By deducing election from the grace and favour of herediiary chiefs, and by the artifice of compounding society of orders, and not of individuals, the usurpation of a right to modify the government without consulting a nation, is also produced; it is this usurpation, which enslaves societies, under the sanction of society ; thus the orders of Denmark abolished election, and made the monarch despotick; pretending to constitute the society, they usurped the power of modifying the government, and enslaved the society. So acted the orders of Ireland. So acted the orders of England, ill changing the succession of the crown; and in appointing representatives for the people for four years, by a law extending the time of service from three to seven.

It was one effort of the first part of this essay, to prove that aristocracy in every form, was artificial; but if a reader can be found who dissents from what opinion, none will deny that hereditary orders are so. They are an effect of society, as much as hereditary estates in land. Both arise from laws. Society is paramount to law; law, therefore,