Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/17

Rh fiial principles, and not in orders, clans or casts, natural or factitious; this effort must be postponed, until the way is opened to it, bj a more particular review of Mr. Adams's system. To this, therefore, I return.

He supposes "that every society must naturally produce an aristocratical order of men, which it will be impossible to confine to an equality of rights with other men." To determine the truth of this position, an inquiry must be made into the mode by which these orders have been produced in those countries, placed before ui by Mr. Adams, as objects of terror or imitation.

In order to understand the question correctly, it is proper to hear Mr. Adams state it himself. Throughout his book, it is constantly appearing, as constituting the great principle upon which his system is founded; but here it can only appear in a quotation, selected as concise, explicit and unequivocal.

"These sources of inequality," says he, "which are common to every people, and can never be altered by any, because they are founded in the constitution of nature; this natural aristocracy among mankind, has been dilated on, because it is a fact essential to be considered in the constitution of a government. It is a body of men which contains the greatest collection of virtues and abilities in a free government; the brightest ornament and glory of a nation; and may always be made the greatest blessing of society, if it he judiciously managed in the constitution. But if it is not, it is always the most dangerous; nay, it maybe added, it never fails to be the destruction of the commonwealth. What shall be done to guard against it? There is but one expedient yet discovered, to avail the society of all the benefits from this body of men, which they are capable of affording, and at the same time prevent them from undermining or invading the public liberty; and that is to throw them all, or at least the most remarkable of them, into one assembly