Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/451

Rh degenerate from either to another. Recessions to and from all forms of government may take place, and therefore these forms could not be intended by "good principles," because these fluctuating recessions would, under that idea, make all forms good, and all bad.

The inability of the old analysis to define a good form of government, and its destitution of some beacon by which to steer back to the harbour of safety, from an ocean of corruption, is thus apparent. It only tells mankind, when unhappy under monarchy, aristocracy or democracy, to go back from one to another, or to some mixture of them. Whereas the analysis of this essay, by arranging governments according to the principles in which they are founded, discloses the mode of their preservation in a state of purity, and also the way to restore that purity whenever it is impaired,

Although the idea of going back to first good principles has been repeated into a maxim, it is seldom honestly explained or applied; nor has it ever been confessed, that the phrase explodes the old, and suggests a more correct analysis of governments. Its correctness and power is illustrated, by supposing that sedition laws, or a chartered stock aristocracy, are deviations from our first good principles. How is the deviation to be discovered? By launching into the ocean of the old analysis and its mixtures? No. By bringing it to the test of the new analysis, founded in moral principles. If it is thus discovered, how are nations to return to their first good principles? By taking refuge in monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, or a mixture of them? No. By repealing laws deviating from its first good principles. One of these illustrations will also serve to display the errour and fraud of the artifice, by which mankind have been persuaded to subscribe to the following syllogism—"Man cannot possess free government, unless he is virtuous; but he is vicious; therefore he cannot possess free government"—so ingeniously invented. and so comfortably recommended in all