Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/621

Rh, in spite of every precaution, might impair and undermine the principles of any constitution, against the will both of the nation and the government, nor is there any sufficient remedy against such an evil, except additional political law. The absence of any check against this mode of changing constitutions, displays the errour of considering election, singly, as a sufficient sponsor for a free government. It is itself the child, the creature and the instrument of political law, amidst whose numerous progeny it occupies but one, though an important station. If self government or political law should yield all its rights and all its power to election, like the parent who transfers his whole estate to a favourite child, it would first become contemptible, and then die forgotten.

An ignorance of conventions and political law, and an unlimited confidence in election, have heretofore defeated the hopes of all the fabricators of free governments. Election, both legislative and executive, has been uniformly corrupted by parties of interest, political op pecuniary. In Rome, and in Italy during the three centuries quoted by Mr. Adams, by patrician orders. In England, first by feudal barons, then by the papal hierarchy, and now by the ministerial and stock parties of interest. These eases shew that aristocracies of interest in all shapes, titled or untitled, can hammer election into a political machine, resembling a curious knife said to have been invented by ingenious thieves, for cutting purses from pockets, without alarming the owners. Whig election passed the septennial law in England, and party aristocracy debauched even Addison into a strenuous vindication of this atrocious usurpation. Elective responsibility passed a law in Virginia in 1779, declaring "that it was inconsistent with the principles of civil liberty, and contrary to the rights of the other members of the society, that any body of men therein should have authority to enlarge their own powers, prerogatives or emoluments, and that the General Assembly cannot, at their own will, increase their allowance," And near twenty years