Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/598

586 their own misfortunes, in all the fluctuations of victory. Parties, like usurpers, acquire nothing from each other. The rich spoils of a gallant but deluded nation, were the fruits gathered by the whig and tory parties from the opinion—that it is knavery to adhere to the publick interest, and folly to exercise one's own judgement. Thus election, designed to advance this interest, is converted into an instrument for parties; and that which is successful, hastens to reap the transitory harvest by legislative abuses, during the delirium of victory, until its crimes make room for a rival, equally unrestrained, which follows its precedents, repeats its frauds, and experiences its fate. By considering a zeal for party as more wise or honourable, than a zeal for good or bad laws, a nation is thus perpetually suspended in a state of political warfare, pregnant only with aggravations of calamity.

Election in the United Slates becomes more contemptible than in England, when degraded by a legal power of regulating wealth and poverty, into a whig or a tory, a Pitt or a Fox, if it is seduced by a worthless maxim to commit the crime, for which the English parliament are wise enough to obtain a valuable consideration. It appoints the prime minister of our sovereignty. If like the corrupted English interests, which govern the appointment of theirs, it was well paid for its work; or if like the king by whom this appointment is nominally made it was lavishly endowed without expense to itself; it might boast of having sold its conscience and understanding for something solid; but to give away both, for a hollow notion of adhering to a party, that it may be fleeced and not bribed, would be an act of self abasement demonstrating that it was unable to distinguish between good and bad principles, and was of course flattered, despised and cheated. A sovereignty, popular or monarchical, ignorant of the principles by which it is preserved or destroyed, is first a cypher, then a tool, and finally the victim of its own servants. The folly both of a foolish people and a foolish king, consists in suffering