Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/604

592 knowledge the divine favour, by reaping from it the greatest of sublunary blessings. Legislation must either be restrained within the pale of good moral principles, by the exertion of this modern dispensation; or it must more extensively than ever resort to bad ones, to suppress its effects. And neither monarchy. faction, avarice or ambition, will be able hereafter to effect their ends in the mild modes of ancient oppression, until ancient ignorance is restored, as was evinced by the revolutionary struggles and their termination in France.

Constitutions are often converted from tests for law, into snares for ignorance, by the ingenious verbal criticisms, to which the vices, the errours, and the passions of parties will often resort. If the single words "religion and republick," are often made to cover superstition and tyranny, what party can fail to find shelter for any law under a long constitution; but good moral principles cannot be made bad by words, nor bad, good. Constitutional powers, being all subordinate and subservient to the end of preserving a free and moderate government, do not admit of any constructions subversive of these ends. If a nation should erect a temple, and bestow on trustees powers for its preservation, no construction of these powers could be correct, by which its pillars would be gradually weakened, and the edifice finally destroyed. Even no power expressly given, can be constitutionally used to defeat the intention for which it was given. Congress are empowered to raise armies and to borrow money; but by using one power to erect a military aristocracy, like the French, or the other to erect a stock aristocracy, like the English, they would be guilty of treason against the constitution, without violating its letter.

In like manner, had an express power to grant charters been given to congress, it could only have been constitutionally exercised for the support of a free and moderate government, if this was the primary end of the constitution itself; and its use for the destruction of this end, would have been a real usurpation, by the help of a legal fraud.