Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/438

428 with a sanction for its perpetuity, infinitely stronger than the Spartan oath. Does reason or zeal dictate this project?

Our policy does not conceive that nature will sometimes create an aristocracy, and at others, by refusing to do so, leave its creation to the people. It does not believe that she deprives mankind of the qualities necessary for self preservation, and yet enables them to judge correctly of Mr. Adams's intricate theory. Nor that she qualifies nations to erect governments for the purpose of establishing their liberty, and then disqualifies them for keeping these governments to their duty. The idea, that the people may be once friends, but ever after enemies to themselves, is as remote from our policy, as from nature.

The reader is warned not to misunderstand the application of the principle of division, as used by our policy and Mr. Adams's theory. Our policy divides power, and unites the nation in one interest; Mr. Adams's divides a nation into several interests, and unites power. By our policy, power having been first sparingly bestowed on the government, is next minutely divided, and then bound in the chains of responsibility. This discloses its opinion, that each part of political power is dangerous to liberty; and because the whole is of the nature of its parts, the entire government is subjected to the right, asserted by our policy, and admitted by Mr. Adams to be capable of once doing good; the right of the nation to influence or change its government.

Our policy does not confide the powers withheld by the constitution, to the protection of any theory of balances. The government is not made amenable to itself. If it usurps a power withheld, by whom is it to be restrained? "Not by the people, (says Mr. Adams) they are no keepers at all of their own liberties." And upon the credit of such an assertion, he contends for a government of orders, as if power would be a safe centinel over power, or the devil over Lucifer. But our policy considers the physical force of an armed nation, and the moral force of election and division, as better centinels. Both arms, and the right of suffrage, ought