Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/236

226 power of legislating, empanelling juries, and appointing and trying judges.

Our first criticism of the legislative principles of the United States, is directed of course to the sexennial election of senators. The degree in which an independency of pubJick opinion for six years, is able to efface legislative integrity, and excite disloyalty and avarice, l>eyond an annual responsibiIity, by figures and theory, is as six to one. By experience, is nearly demonstrated in the British House of Commons. The maxim "that tyranny begins where annual election ends," subscribed to by Mr. Adams in the prime of life, and copiously applied by the people of the United States, is deserted and reversed in the eases to which politicians have thought it most applicable; where the power delegated was most dangerous. And the reversal of this maxim in the tenure of the president and senators of the United States, may possibly be as mortal to our policy, as the desertion of that so nearly allied to it, which dictated consular rotation, was to the policy of Rome.

The long official tenure of the Senate of the United States has been unwarily suffered, from mistaking it for an aristocratical balance, whereas it is a body organized upon democratical principles, to equalise the rights of states, great and small, rich or poor j and to prevent aristocratieal privileges or powers from being usurped by superior strength or wealth. The United States, far from intending to introduce an aristocratical principle by the senate, submitted to this equalising democratical regulation, for the same reasons that rich and strong men submit to an equality of rights with the poor and weak. In considering therefore the Senate*s time of service, we ought to be guided, not by a false, but by the true motive for its form; and to discern that the question is not whether a long or a short official tenure is best to sustain an aristocratical balance, but which is best to sustain a democratical equality between unequal states. Which is best to sustain a democratical equality of rights between men unequal in wealth or