Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/517

Rh policy is perfectly attained; if unequal, it is in a degree de-eated. By legislative elections of electors, the state association, by district, the general popular association, acquires an unequal share of influence over a president. Either is a tendency adverse to our policy; the first, towards disunion, the second, towards consolidation. An election by a general ticket, blends, unites and reconciles these two capacities or associations, more completely than either of the other modes.

If it is proved, by the division of the legislature between general and state will, and by imparting to each species of will an influence over executive power, that the intention of our policy was to preserve and defend both the state and general associations; how can the opinion, that the senate was modelled upon aristocratical principles, be maintained, except by shewing, that an aristocracy is calculated to preserve the democratical state associations?

The ingenuity with which state and general will is blended in the construction of the general government, displays an intention of preventing the evil of a rivalry between the two orders of governments; would the introduction of an aristocratical order into one, have been consistent with that object?

A short comparison between the aristocracies of the first, the second and the third ages, and the senate of the United States, will convince us, that as the senate possesses no quality common to these aristocracies, so a common epithet cannot be applied to both. Superstition, title and paper; consecration, inheritance and fraud; sacrilege, irresponsibility and stockjobbing; and a corporate or party interest feeding upon the people: constitute the characters of these successive aristocracies. It cannot be imagined that the constitution discloses an intention of copying some one of those originals by neglecting to preserve a single feature of either in the formation of the senate. With less foundation still, has Mr. Adams maintained the existence of the aristocratical principle, in state senators.