Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/659

Rh it, though united to a bad form of government, than from the same region cut up into narrow territories, governed by the best forms.

The United States, under a monarchy, can only retain the advantage of extensive territory, by an oligarchy composed of deputy-kings, bashaws, satraps or mandarins. As a republick, the advantage can only be retained, by rejecting the aristocratical system of feeding avarice by law; because this system, being more oppressive than monarchy, would be exchanged for it. If this errour is rejected, instead of paying the old price for extensive territory, no inequalities of liberty or of government can exist, and the territorial capacity of our policy, will be adequate to the liberty and happiness of the whole, instead of being devoted to the avariee and ambition of parties of interest. Monarchy ties extensive territories together by deputy-kings, fortresses and armies. A numerical but spurious republick, uses for this purpose both armies and laws for distributing property, but soon becomes the victim of the first, because the hatred purchased by the second deprives it of national assistance. But a genuine republick, unites the most extensive territories by justice, and is defended by the national affection. It travels over space without bloodshed, advances without conquest, and is only arrested by the ocean. How much more sublime is the idea of forming a great nation, by a chain of republicks, subordinate to publick good, than by a chain of satraps subordinate to imperial will, or of chartered companies subordinate to selfish avarice? Such a system stands upon national interest. No people, except ourselves, have seriously attempted to make this interest the basis of civil government. Sometimes it is lost in the pomp of titles, at others under the cowl of superstition; sometimes it is drowned in the din of arms, at others counterfeited in the garb of patriotism: sometimes it is sacrificed for the bribes of patronage, at others stupified by the promises of stock; but under our policy it can never become completely a felo de se, except it shall submit to the legislative usurpation of distributing wealth and poverty.