Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/561

Rh ish zeal or pious folly, are as really the slaves and instruments of tyranny, and will as certainly degenerate into the vices and baseness of slavery, as the followers of Peter the hermit, or of Bonaparte the conqueror. Parties are unwarily admitted to be natural and wholesome to republicks, though republicks are constantly destroyed by parties. Without the debasements of confidence, and the frauds of authority, their existence would be seldom felt, and the slavery they draw upon nations, would be never suffered.

If men will plant liberty in individual imperfection and mutability, instead of planting it in the permanency and perfection of principles, it must perish. The tools of patriots frequently become the authors of more evils, than the slaves of tyrants. A republican government cannot live upon monarchical diet. Free governments are destroyed by confidence and authority. Can a more dangerous habit befal the people or parties of the United States, than one which is the constant prelude of slavery? We have suffered authority to call forth in self defence her stoutest champions. She has summoned to her assistance, an orator, a saint and a hero; the English and American parties of whig and tory, federalist and republican; and six philosophers of unsurpassed integrity and talents. Yet these formidable auxiliaries only serve to rivet the conclusion, that the common sense and common honesty of a nation, is both a wiser and honester source of government than the authority of saints, kings, philosophers, heroes, orators, parties, factions or separate interests in any form. Nor do I know a maxim, the belief of which would be a better security for liberty, than that no nation can long preserve a free government, if it is guided by the caprices or frauds of authority in the enumerated shapes or in any others; nor can it be enslaved, except by commuting national understanding and honesty for a dependence upon this humoursome, fickle, selfish, ambitious, and dishonest moral being.