Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/526

516 ties are converted into mere ladders to power, and election is restricted to the barren right of saying which ladder shall be mounted; so as to produce, not a check, but an excitement of the authority to make the most of present power. Authority moulds men into the same kind of moral beings, whether it is bestowed by a free or an oppressed nation, by a patriotick or a slavish party, because the same moral effects proceed from the same moral causes; and hence, however derived, its apprehensions of the alternation to which it is exposed by election, produce to confiding nations the same misfortunes.

All the truth in the opinion that knowledge is the best security for liberty," lies within its capacity to detect the fraud of authority, and to retain the contrary principle, self government. Our policy draws the liberty we enjoy from one principle; authority is the source of the present state of other countries. The comparison would at once awaken the eredulity, by which nations are induced quietly to put on the yoke of authority, were they not perplexed by its false and constant claims to national gratitude. Would to God some standard could be established to detect the fraud of magnifying publick services, up to the value of national liberty. When were those rendered by George Washington exceeded by any individual? Yet if the publick services of all other citizens during the same period, were poised against his, the disparity would satisfy every future patriot, that he ought to submit to an example, which graduates the highest publick services, by a seale, far short of justifying bad precedents and sacrifices injurious to nations.

Authority is similar to monarchy or aristocracy, in preferring the abilities and interest of one or a few, to the abilities and interest of all, as the ground work of government. It is similar to an elective monarchy or aristocracy, in being the creature of national or party confidence. But it is more pernicious to good government than elective monarchy or aristocracy, in being more mortal; it cannot outlive