Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/644

632 artless and savage state of society which can be conceived, and lose all those principles for regulating human nature, to which the world is indebted for its whole progress from a state of barbarity. Government, freed from moral restraints, is the result of the passions of the men who govern. Men, combine l in self constituted parties, such as whig and tory, republican and federal, not being exposed to any moral restraints, similar to the political laws of constitutions for disciplining governours, act as governours would do, unrestrained by political law. If governours thus unrestrained, would be guided by selfishness, avarice and ambition, all such political parties must by the laws of nature follow the same guides. If governours, at liberty to follow their own passions, would not be constituted into a genuine republick by assuming that name, neither can a name infuse republican principles into unrestrained parties of interest, of ins and outs, struggling for wealth and power. The world has never seen such parties guided by the principles which secure a free government, because they are not tied to loyalty by the ligament of political law in their party proceedings, nor would it have ever seen a republican government, if all governours had been equally at liberty to pursue the dictates of self interest or passion. Nominal republicanism, being spurious and fraudulent, takes every thing it gains from that which is real and true. The penalties paid by nations for an opinion, that good names implied good principles, caused the United States to resort to the expedient of controlling men by political law, to which they have already been indebted for a wonderful number of good governours, whilst few or none have ever been made, even by the good names judge, bishop or nobleman. Whenever they are deluded of this expedient by the artifice of adapting names to a temporary prejudice, they will pay the same penalties paid by other nations for the same absurd idolatry. Government has been called a necessary evil, on account of the propensity of governours to sacrifice the publick good to their own selfishness. Why should nations invent a whole tribe