Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/600

588 the talon of the hawk; nor can a man be shielded against the effects of power by writing "patriot" on his forehead. Whenever, therefore, the popularity of parties or individuals, shall free law from a strict examination at the tribunal of moral principles, a revolution is effected or at hand.

The constitutional power of the president to influence the legislature by his patronage, and the unconstitutional practice of its members influencing the election of a president, might be moulded into a powerful ally of a system of legislation, neither suggested nor examined by good moral principles. Its tendency is to weaken, and at length to destroy, the responsibility of the president to the people; to extend the corruption of patronage in the legislature, and to defeat the good effects designed to be produced by the division of power between the legislative and executive departments. By the constitution of Virginia, a patronage operates visibly upon the independence of that branch of the legislature, numerically inferior, because its members can only gain the best offices in the state by the favour of the other. A cross patronage between the president and congress, more than doubles the operation of this mode of appointment against the principle of dividing power. In Virginia, the evil is mitigated by the absence of any executive patronage over the members of the legislature. But if the president should become the patron of congress, and congress the patron of the president, checks would be converted into accomplices, and a secret and intricate consolidation of those divisions, intended to restrain legislation within the verge of good moral principles, would necessarily ensue. The political sect arising from this commerce, would resort to law to strengthen an evasion of the constitution. The obstacles against the institution of titled orders, would turn its attention towards the creation of partie, of interest in other forms, to secure its power and gratify his wishes. And besides, all the artifices for inflaming the passions of the vulgar, and bewildering the understandings of the ignorant; an identification of the government with the