Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/603

Rh ally try two parties struggling for wealth and power in a free government, not by prejudices and delusions, which these parties in their pleadings infuse, but by fixed moral principles. Being as corrupt as hierarchies or noble orders, and struggling for the same objects by which such parties are invigorated, they draw their qualities from the same infusion; and a nation divided between them in a constant political warfare, can only win by their alternate victories that kind of liberty, to be reaped from a similar warfare under the banners of an order of priests, and an order of nobles.

Whilst the preservation of a federal form of government, dictated precautions against its subversion by political law, it is left exposed in a considerable degree to the lever of civil law and party spirit united. Had legislative chastity been secured against the addresses of executive patronage, and laws for making war been subjected to the concurrence of two thirds of the states, precautions better than those existing might have prevented the differences between the states, and alleviated the animosities between the parties, which seem better calculated to foster provincial hatreds, and the gradual approach of burdensome government, than wealth, happiness, and liberty. The didactick state authority is no match for a power concentrated in a few hands, and able by law to make war, and to require all the revenue a nation can pay." Add to this force the power of distributing wealth by law, and the division of might between the general and state governments, would be well represented by a giant armed with a scimitar, and an infant, with a needle. Heavy taxes, loaning, war and legal devices for distributing wealth and poverty, are the modern scalping knives, tomahawks and rifles, used by avarice and ambition, because the more merciful weapons, superstition and nobility, having been broken by knowledge, more cruel became necessary, to intimidate, or more expensive, to corrupt her; and mankind must hence suffer, on account of an accession of knowledge, an accession of oppression, or piously ac-