Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/250

240 tyrannical administrations." By its means only, can "absolute despotism be introduced whilst the form of a free constitution remains." This alone is able to convert the only barrier against the usurpations of executive power, into a shelter for its intrigues, a sanction for its oppressions, a "secure instrument" for its ambition, and a vehicle for revolution to be effected "by changing the spirit of laws."

Had our constitution been formed exactly upon the English model, that experiment would have been a map, upon which the progress of a government, guided by the vicious principle of executive patronage over legislative power, could have been exactly traced, [s a principle, too vicious and corrupt for limited monarchy, sufficiently pure for a republican government? Will limited monarchy exist only in form, and be converted in fact by this principle into a despotism; and will republican freedom exist in fact, exposed to the same legislative corruption, which has reduced limitations on monarchy to form?

Why should we conceal from ourselves the plain truth? Representation is either the best security for a free government, or the best instrument for the most oppressive. Influenced by one man, it is an instrument; uninfluenced, a security. Need we reason upon the question ? Has not England a House of Commons, and France a tribunate? In England, executive patronage has left the entire form of the constitution standing, and annihilated two thirds of its substance; it is formed of orders, and two of the three are reduced to cyphers or instruments. Here, though our constitution is not formed of king. lords and commons, or of any classification of men, but of the principles of division, responsibility, and national self government, yet executive influence over judicial and legislative power, can also destroy its substance and leave its form standing, by converting the sentinels of the people into the instruments of ambition, and demolishing the efficacy of division by a corrupt unanimity.