Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/622

610, in the true spirit of a party of interest, it added fifty per centum to its own wages. This addition, and the recited law, stand unrepealed to this day, as evidences of the feebleness of constitutional or political law, made by governments; and the inefficacy of election, singly, to preserve the plainest principle of civil liberty. But the election of conventions is a different thing. It looks for different qualities; it is not bribed by hopes of money or office; its offspring cannot bestow either on itself, and its life is too short to admit of corruption, or to reap power and wealth from the political law it enunciates, like a government.

It is universally allowed that forms of government are liable to decay. Without repair, decay terminates in destruction. A constitution must therefore die in the common course of nature, unless it eludes the scythe of death, for ever in the bands of fraud and ambition, by occasional restoratives. However proudly the English form of government at one period reared its bead above its rivals, patriots now contemplate it, as travellers do the ruins of Palmyra. Its vital faculty is gone, though an interesting skeleton remains; but its resurrection in its purest form would now cause a degree of terror, something like what is expected at the day of judgement.

Mr. Adams's theory, and all others adverse to conventions, must establish the constancy of human opinion, or fail. Was this supposed constancy a fiction whilst be was a disciple of Nedham, and does it become a truth, now that be has changed into an enemy to this author? Can that nature be constant, which is to-day ardent for democracy, to-morrow, for monarchy? Is not a capacity for improvement inconsistent with the attribute of constancy? Can unchangeable constitutions, be adapted for a being changeable and corruptible? Would an entire nation, as accomplished as Mr. Adams, require the same form of government as a nation of savages? If the moral nature of man is inconstant, how is this inconstancy to be controlled or nourished, in order to preserve a free government, except by new