Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/655

Rh narch, are common spectacles; because monarchy ends at the end of the monarch's sphere, and some political anomaly commences. Instead of monarchical or aristocratical accumulations of power, to give it a brisker circulation, the United States have rested their policy upon the two governing agents, knowledge and will, of a capacity or moral sphere commensurate to their territory, and naturally expanding with it. The capacity of this policy beyond monarchy, for the government of an extensive territory, is proved by the equality of liberty or of government, between those who reside near to the capital, and those far from it; an effect of infinite value, which monarchy cannot produce. Near the monarch and at a distance from him, different governments are always found. Monarchy only succeeds in cases where it is not unnaturally loaded; as those of armies, garrisons, savage tribes and private families; and the same cases are found to be below the genius of a policy calculated for a wider sphere. With such experience, and without considering that the mind of a nation is spacious, and that of a monarch narrow, the maxim, "ne sutor ultra crepidam," is wonderfully violated by the dislocated notions, that monarchy is fitted for spacious, and republican forms of government, for narrow spheres.

A power of changing oligarchs, is the most perfect capable of being exercised by the monarch of an extensive territory; but this change of oligarchs is far from proving that no oligarchy exists, and therefore unless oligarchy is monarchy, the latter cannot cover a large territory.

As election cannot extend the knowledge and will of one man contrary to the laws of moral geometry, the execution of the boundless power of appointment bestowed upon the president, must depend upon the knowledge and will of the very worst kind of oligarchs; such as are irresponsible and unknown. The moral incapacity of one man to legislate, knowingly, for a great nation, is the same in respect to official appointments. Accumulated power to be circulated by one man, bears a close resemblance to accumulated wealth