Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/520

510 only, established to preserve their rights in their double capacity, as the state and federal sovereign. Responsibility is therefore equally due to them in both these capacities. If it is less in one case than the other, one class of rights are safer than the other. And if one is left to depend on the qualities of individuals, whilst the other is secured by placing these qualities under the discipline of the sovereign power, then one is hazarded upon the old principles of government, and the other secured by the new. Is it the interest of the people to lose either the state or the general government; or do opposite principles produce an equal degree of security?

The more a nation depends for its liberty on the qualities of individuals, the less likely it is to retain it. By expecting publick good from private virtue, we expose ourselves to publick evil from private vices. This miserable tenure which has scourged the world, has been exchanged by the United States for the restraints of political law, among which an effectual responsibility is the strongest. Is not this as necessary for men in power, called senators, as for men called representatives? The world has been enslaved by depending for liberty on the uncontrolled passions of individuals, we have enjoyed freedom, by controlling these passions. Every body makes good state governours where executive power is most restricted. Will the state rights of the people be best secured, by committing them to the custody of the passions of such individuals, as may form the senate, or to an effectual responsibility to the guardians of the rights themselves? To the ancient system of confiding in human vices, or to the modern, of confiding in strong political law to control these vices?

If the moral principle of equality, was intended to exist among the states, an effectual mode of securing it, accords with this intention. Whether a seven years' independency of electors, secures the faithfulness of representatives to good, or exposes them to evil moral principles, is demonstrated in a branch of the British government. Are the