Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/643

Rh nothing. Guelph and Gibeline, Whig and Tory, Federal and Republican, have all been equally capable of no meaning or any meaning; nor was the name Praise God Barbone, any proof of the piety of its owner. But though the names of men or of parties, are a frivolous definition of such human qualities as are liable to fluctuation, yet it is easy to invent or agree upon some epithet, denoting a definite collection of moral principles, applicable to the formation of a government, having previously arranged such as are contrary to each other in distinct divisions. Freedom of speech or its suppression, responsibility or exemption from control, division of power or its accumulation, defence by a militia or by a standing army, division of property by individual exertions or by fraudulent laws, are instances of the facility with which an arrangement might be made, exhibiting distinct classes of moral principles, capable of receiving a name, or of being used to chasten governments or legislation, without being comprised by any epithetical definition. Either the word "republican," may be used to convey an idea of the class of good political principles, or if it be true as is often contended, that like the names Peter and Judas, applied to men, and whig, tory, republican and federal, applied to parties, it can convey no idea of principles, then the class of good principles may be constituted into a band of sentinels, each ready to alarm nations whenever an inroad is made by fraud, avarice, or ambition, upon the quarter where he is stationed. It is true that the names of governments are as unable to convey an idea of the qualities of governours, as are the names of men or of parties of theirs, because men are still the subject named, and therefore, unless we abstract the name of our form of government, from those who may administer it, and consider it as implying a fixed class of principles, for the express purpose of controlling the fluctuating and selfish nature of these administrators, its freedom cannot continue. By relying upon the undulating temper of undisciplined man for the administration of a government, we are brought back to the most