Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/642

630 Aristocracy, by playing the Harlequin, by Protean transformations, and by its painted draperies, will no longer be able to perplex and deceive mankind. Tlirougb tbe robes of superstition, noble orders, paper stock, and of all the various parties of interest, the same principle will be seen, and whenever it changes its dress, every body will know it to be a new attempt to conceal its deformity.

But our efforts to understand principles, are obstructed by that toad acoucheur, construction, which pretends to draw out of the womb of the term "republick," every conceivable form of government, except the solitary despotism of one man; and to require her maternal tenderness and blind affection for the whole monstrous progeny. This skilful operator boasts of the still rarer art of making two beings out of one foetus, in the case of the English government; and of proving that though this republick and monarchy, this piece of hermaphrodite political mechanism, has been born again and again, according to the motley humours of barons, priests, kings, conquerors, mobs and stockjobbers, it has yet the wonderful property of being always the same, or at least, whatever our operator pleases to make of it. By travelling over history, and collecting the fraudulent or erroneous applications of the word republican to reduce it to an equivalency with the word "government," it is made like the term "man," to embrace all moral qualities, good and evil; and liberty is deprived even of her name. This device can only be eluded by a moral analysis. It will enable us to know good or bad governments, or good or bad laws, in the mode by which we distinguish between good or bad men. Its basis, is a specification of qualities, illustrated by those of our policy; as for instance, "the sovereignty of the people, an equality of rights, at abhorrence of privileges and sinecures, free discussion, a preference of a militia to mercenary armies, a protection and not a distribution of property by law, an enmity to all parties of interest, and many others;" and not political names, always expounded by interest and party, to mean any thing or