Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/22

12 difficult to convince us, that we ought to erect an aristocracy spontaneously; the folly of which, Mr. Adams unwarily admits, by insisting upon the great danger to be apprehended from it, to enhance the merit of his system, in meeting this danger with a king and a house of commons. And therefore the short and safe expedient is, to tell us that nature has settled the question, by declaring that we shall have an aristocracy; being induced to believe and concede this, the difficulty is over; and the whole system, bottomed upon the concession, becomes irrefutable.

Hence have been derived, the sanctity of oracles, the divinity of kings, and the holiness of priests; and now that these bubbles have become the scoff of common sense, experiment is to decide, whether there remains in America a stock of superstition, upon which can be ingrafted, "an aristocracy from nature." Should it grow upon this stem, Mr. Adams is not entitled to the reputation of an inventor. He states the origin of the thought, in speaking of the aristocracies of Greece. These, he says, had the address to persuade the people, that they deduced their genealogies from the Gods; of course their titles to aristocratical pre-eminences were of divine origin, and inheritable quality. But M Adams's system, it must be admitted, improves upon the idea, in relying upon some perpetual operation of nature, as a less fortuitous resource for an aristocracy, than the amorous adventures of heathen deities.

In old times, kings as well as nobles were believed to be heaven-born. But Mr. Adams confines the procreative power of nature to an aristocracy, and thus makes room for the human invention of a king and a house of commons, to cheek and discipline nature's unkindness. So Filmer might have acquired political fame, by proposing a house of lords and a house of commons, as checks upon his divine or natural king.

A short review of a few of the aristocracies quoted by Mr. Adams, will exhibit the affinity between the ancient