Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/21

Rh what Mr. Adams calls her progeny; and instead of maintaining the exclusiveness of wealth, contributes to its division by inciting competition, and assailing perpetuities. How successfully, let England illustrate. She, no longer relying upon nature for an aristocracy, is perpetually obliged to repair the devastations it sustains from alienation; the weapon invented by knowledge; by resorting to the funds of paper systems, pillage, patronage and hierarchy, for fresh supplies.

The reader will be pleased to recollect the question in debate. Mr. Adams asserts, that an aristocratical body of men is necessary, as being natural. Having thus gotten it, he admits that it will be ambitious and dangerous to liberty. Being ambitious and dangerous, he infers, that it ought to be controlled. And this, he says, can only be effected by a king over it, and a house of commons under it; thus placing it bet ween two fires, on account of its strength. danger and ambition.

The entire hypothesis rests upon a single foundation, "that aristocracy is natural and inevitable;" and therefore this ground-work ought to be well examined.

The contrivance for erecting a system, by asserting and setting out from the will of God, or from nature, is not new. Most of those systems of government, to which Mr. Adams refers us for instruction, resorted to it ; and therefore the propriety of reviving the principle, upon which these ancient systems were generally or universally founded, to revive its effects, must be admitted. "It is the will of Jupiter," exclaimed some artful combination of men. “The will of Jupiter is inevitable," responded the same combination to itself; and ignorance submitted to a fate, manufactured by human fraud.

Whenever it is impossible to prove a principle, which is necessary to support a system, a reference to an inevitable power, calling it God or nature, is preferable to reasoning; because every such principle is more likely to be exploded, than established by reasoning. For instance; it would be