Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/416

406 compounded; to ascertain the difference and the preference; and to detect any fugitives from one class to the other, is the utmost I propose.

Besides hereditary order, and exclusive privilege, placed at the head of one class, we have swelled it by the moral beings, called legal religion, legal freedom of inquiry, accumulation of power, patronage or corruption, ignorance, virtual representation, judicial uncontrol, funding, and political families, or an oligarchy of banks.

In the opposite class of moral beings, we have placed an equality of civil rights, freedom of religion, and of inquiry, division of power, national influence or sovereignty, knowledge, uncorrupted representation, and actual responsibility. This enumeration of a few individuals used to explain our reasoning, and not as including entire classes.

We have attempted to prove, that the evil class, cannot be made to produce good effects, nor the good class, evil and the superiority we contend for, on behalf of the policy of the United States, consists in this, that it is compounded chiefly of the good, whilst all other governments have been compounded chiefly of the evil class; so as to account for the blessings of the one, and the mischiefs of the others; and to produce both a shining pattern and a shining beacon.

The same mode of reasoning appeared calculated also to awaken publick vigilance, against the most dangerous means of changing the nature of a government. It may have been compounded of moral beings, selected with integrity and wisdom, from the good class; but by transplanting into it by law, individuals from the evil class, these exoticks must change its nature. For instance; let us look at our own policy, as it stood immediately after the adoption of the present general government, and contemplate the features or moral beings, to be seen in the faces of the several constitutions, of which it was compounded. Transplant into it a sufficient portion of executive patronage to influence Congress; a banking oligarchy without a distinguishing badge, influencing election; judicial irresponsibi-