Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/157

Rh in the uniform corruption or destruction of election and representation by hereditary orders; on the other, in a long course of beneficial effects in the United States from election and representation, where there are no such orders. Mr. Adams has viewed the elective system through the first perspective, and shuts his eyes upon the second. From the first he collects its character, and disgusted with vices, reflected from the English system itself, he proposes by Introducing that system, to remedy the elective system of the United States.

Nedham had said "that the people, by representatives successively chosen, were the best guardians of their own liberties." And that "the life of liberty, and the only remedy against self interest, lies in succession of powers and persons." The answer to which, Mr. Adams observes, If this is so, the United States of America have taken the most effectual measures to secure that life and that remedy, in establishing annual elections of their governours. senators and representatives. This will probably be allowed to be as perfect an establishment of a succession of powers and persons, as human laws can make: but in what manner annual elections of governours and senators will operate, remains to be ascertained. It should always be remembered, that this is not the first experiment that was ever made in the world of elections to great offices of state; how they have operated in every great nation, and what has been their end, is very well known. Mankind have universally discovered « hat chance was preferable to a corrupt choice, and have trusted Providence rather than themselves. First magistrates and senators had better be made hereditary at once, than that the people should he universally debauched and bribed, go to loggerheads, and fly to arms regularly every year. Thank heaven! Americans understand casing conventions; and if the time should come, as it is very possible it may, when hereditary descent shall become a less evil than annual fraud and