Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/159

Rh The utmost pitch of his romedy is to exchange our elective and representative vices, for those of England. Election in England, being derived from an erroneous source, and corrupted by the artifices of hereditary power, is of course more vicious and less efficient than in America j and being an object of contempt on account of its vices, it attracts but a small shave of national confidence, and forms but an inconsiderable obstacle to the tyranny and oppression of monarchy and aristocracy; in fact we shall hereafter endeavour to prove, that it is modified into an instrument for their use.

If it was true, therefore, as Mr. Adams asserts, "that the manner in which annual elections of governours and senators will operate in the United States remained to be ascertained." yet. as the utter corruption of election by hereditary power, does not remain to be ascertained, neither philosophy nor policy have yet discovered, that a certain and malignant evil, was preferable to a possible good.

Philosophy. unbiassed by affections superseding a love of wisdom, has seldom or never given her suffrage in favour of hereditary power, nor will she shut her eyes upon the elective experiment of the United States, although Mr. Adams in policy is pleased to assert, that it remains to be made. It has been made upon some hundreds of governours, and thousands of senators. Is nothing ascertained? Will an equal number of kings and lords act upon the political theatre, without ascertaining also the value of the hereditary principle?

The quotations place "corrupt choice" in contrast with "chance;" and "debauchery, bribery and annual civil war," with "hereditary government." The treatise, ascribes to aristocracy "virtue, wisdom and usefulness," and one of the extracts ascribes to election, the utmost degree of profligacy. Such a mode of reasoning is ficticious, because it suppresses all the shade of the hereditary principle, and all the light of the elective; and presenting a picture of each, which excludes the most striking features of both,