Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/542

530 government, founded in republican principles; because the necessity for a good government, becomes more urgent as the people become more vicious; just as the worse the partners, the better must be the articles.

It is a consolation to observe, as a vicious majority can only defend itself against vicious minorities, by founding society or government in good, just and equal moral principles, that the interest of vice is enlisted on the side of virtue; and suggests the establishment of such forms of government, as will produce a benign influence on private morals. It would be as foolish in a national majority, to enable one or a few of the members to defraud or oppress the others, as in a banking or commercial majority.

Mr. Adams, in the dissertation we have copied, by contrasting virtue and fear, as principles of the moral being called government, discloses a correspondence with the doctrine of this essay; which is, that a government and its laws, ought to be founded in good moral principles, to advance the interest of a vast majority of mankind, however vicious they may be.

If virtue, as a basis of government, be understood to mean, not that the principles of the government, but that the individuals composing the nation must be virtuous, then republicks would be founded in the self same principle with monarchies, namely, the evanescent qualities of individuals. But interest is a better and more permanent basis. Its wonderful capacity for concretion bestows on noble orders, hierarchies and stockjobbers, power for oppression, and loyalty to each other in defrauding; and why may it not also secure the fidelity of nations to themselves, though composed of people equally as vicious? Mankind being now too wise to suffer governments, founded in superstition or fraud, to go on undetected, must either submit to an armed force able to defy knowledge and protect guilt, and become less free as they grow more wise; or use their knowledge, to discover and secure their interest. Because the speculations of errour, and the tongue of flattery, have assigned to repub-