Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/210

200 dents, under no temptation to become undertakers themselves, able from tbeir experience to detect other undertakers, and shedding upon congress the knowledge, integrity and independence, derived from its consular members by the Roman Senate, which, whilst the rotation of the consular office lasted, was able to render even an aristocracy illustrious.

Executive secrecy is one of the monarchical customs, plausibly defended, and certainly fatal to republican government, either in an aristocratical or democratieal form. Had the senate of Rome suffered their consuls to hide the foreign negoeiations under secrecy, or legislated upon the credit of their recommendation, without thorough information, even aristocratical wisdom would sooner have fallen under executive prowess. The essential principle of our policy being the division of power, whatever shall convert one primary division of power into an instrument of another, unites and consolidates the means of usurpation in exact violation of it, and substitutes the evil moral principle of an accumulation of power, for its division. The president, who shall be able to bring congress into the practice of legislating upon a confidence in his recommendations, without a thorough knowledge of the subject, will extend the custom of managing congress by undertakers, exercise by their aid the legislative power, and gradually provide the most ample funds for rewarding their services; a British end, to which executive secrecy inevitably leads. How can national self government exist without a knowledge of national affairs? or how can legislatures be wise or independent, who legislate in the dark upon the recommendation of one man? Executive secrecy furnishes double means for corrupting, nor are the offerings to vanity less greedily accepted, than those to avarice. Intoxicated by the incense of the one, men are prepared for the seduction of the other; nor will they hesitate to extend executive patronage at the national expense, when they consider the wisdom and discrimi-