Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/45

Rh monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, and is capable of displaying the true character of every government, of each of its sections, and of all its measures; objects to which the numerical analysis is utterly incompetent. For instance : A government, a section of it, or a measure, founded in an evil moral principle, such as fraud, ambition, avarice or superstition, must produce correspondent effects, and defeat the end of government ; but resting upon a good moral principle, such as honesty, self-government, justice and knowledge, its effects will also be good, and conformable to the duty and office of government. Whereas the numerical analysis cannot with certainty enable us to foresee the character of a government, because it has no reference to moral causes or effects, good or evil. An absolute monarch, guided by the good moral qualities of man, may produce national happiness ; and so any other anomalous case under the numerical analysis, may serve to perplex the science of politicks; because the publick happiness ensuing from it, instead «if being attributed to the accidental preponderance of the good class of moral qualities, in the monarch, the aristocracy, or the democracy, is toe often attributed to numerical classification. By exploding this analysis, and substituting that of governments, bottomed upon good or evil moral principles, human happiness will less frequently fluctuate with the characters of individual The reader will be often reminded of these principles, which are now to be applied to the aristocracy of paper and patronage.

This being suggested by, or founded in, the evil moral qualities of avarice and ambition, must inevitably produce evil effects; because a system is merely a moral being, and a moral demon cannot be a saint. Under either member of the numerical classification, a nation has a chance for happiness, however inconsiderable, because men may be guided by good moral principles: but none under the vicious system of paper and patronage, because an evil moral principle cannot produce good moral effects. That a system,