Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/557

Rh character will forever adhere to man; but rejecting, with Mr. Godwin, the use of a division of power and responsibility for its control, he proposes a balance of wealth and power, among inflamed orders. And Mr. Malthus founds his moral theory upon a single physical quality, to regulate which, a stronger government would be necessary, than any which has yet appeared. He proposes to introduce the papistical system of celibacy, without the wealth or the concubinage, by which it was made practicable.

Mr. Godwin's and Mr. Adams's systems have yet a further resemblance to each other. The first author proposes to render responsibility for restraining the evil portion of human nature unnecessary, by curing selfishness with a balance of knowledge and property among men. The second, to render it unnecessary, by curing selfisliness with a balance of wealth and power among orders. One nostrun, is a cure for all mankind; the other, for the few composing governments. The only difference between them is, that one balance has never succeeded, and the other has never been tried. Our policy, differing from the projects of curing all men of the evil qualities of human nature, by a balance of property and knowledge, according to one philosopher; or of curing only governing men of these evil qualities, by a balance of wealth and power among orders, according to the other, proposes to subject this bad portion of human nature to a strict discipline, by civil and political law; or a code of laws, able to reach the delinquencies of those imperfect beings who govern, as well as the delinquencies of those who are governed. Godwin's system proposes to render accountableness unnecessary, Mr. Adams's applies it partially, ours universally. They resemble religious systems, declaring that all men, a few, or none, ought to be exempted from the sanctions of religion. Our policy is bottomed upon the old idea that men had two souls, one good the other had. Mr. Adams's, upon the idea of forming a government of three