Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/614

602 majority and the publick interest, wish to repeal. It corrupts the outs or opposition, as well as the administrators of the government, because the leaders of both are equally liable to be annexed to some party of interest by wealth or ambition. And it combines together these rivals, for self preservation, so as to resemble an army, which the people could not disband except by its own vote, however its officers may struggle with each other for command and lucrative employments.

Hence all aristocracies of interest contend, that it should be easy to pass laws, when we can only conjecture their consequences; and hard to repeal them, when these consequences are known; and the sovereignty of the people, being persuaded that it is impregnably fortified by a negative against unforeseen evils, and an inability to arrest such as it feels is gradually inclosed within a circle of long and perpetual laws, drawn by this negative magician; and finally becomes a pageant as powerless as the grand Lama; whilst factitious interests become oppressors as tyrannical as his substitutes.

Attempts to reconcile opposite principles are causes of party spirit and revolution. To sanction law by common consent or publiek will, is one principle; by the will of a combination among parties of interest, another. If the first principle can only prevent, whilst the other can retain fraudulent laws, it is obvious on which side lies the ability to make encroachments. One is armed with a power strictly defensive, and utterly incapable of conquest; the other with a power of retaining every acquisition it can make, by its frequent and sudden inroads upon the territory of its honest and peaceable neighbour.

The unsettled question in relation to the right of instruction, aggravates the evil of minority legislation, and the moral right of self government is defeated in both cases by form and ceremony. In one, the mode of putting a question confers on minorities a legislative power withheld by the constitution; in the other, the mode of giving the