Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/43

Rh to yield to it. His son, less magnanimous than his father, escaped a similar fate by the national weariness of bigotry, fraud and tyranny united; and by practising in some degree the system of corruption. William of Orange farther advanced this baleful system; and Sir Robert Walpole completely organized the aristocracy of the present age, for the purpose of corrupting those, whom the progress of knowledge had enlightened.

From Henry the eighth to that time, the nobility had been but slightly felt as a political power; and Walpole's project for the modern aristocracy, substantially annihilated them. During this interval, superstition, ignorance and feudal power were declining. By their aid, minorities had oppressed nations. By their aid, minorities had erected themselves into the aristocracies of the first and second ages; and patronage and paper became the substitute for these forms of aristocracy, because avarice and ambition, having discovered that man could no longer be made subservient to their designs by means of his ignorance, saw the necessity of obtaining the same subserviency by means of his avarice.

We discern but two kinds of aristocracy; that which the tyrant itself, and that which is the instrument of the tyrant. The ancient feudal and hierarchical aristocracies of England were tyrants themselves. The modern nobles and bishops; the patronage and stock interests; the generals and titulars of Bonaparte, and the mandarins of China, are instruments of tyranny. The same reasons inducing the people to unite with kings against aristocracies, which were themselves tyrants, ought to determine them to assail such as are the instruments of kings. Independent of kings, they are universally the first kind of evil; dependent on them, the second. But mankind are distracted by an host of political doctors, who utter prejudices imbibed from obsolete cases or existing interests. The whole college agree that the British policy is afflicted with some inveterate distemper, but each doctor asserts his favorite limb to