Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/66

56 possess ten fold the power of the house of lords. The nearest approach towards the idea of checks and halances made by the invention of paper and patronage, is by dividing a nation into two weights, one consisting of the government, stockjobbers and office holders; the other of the people. It places pecuniary voraciousness in one scale, and Promethean patience in the other ; and with these weights, produces a political system, as wide from one founded in a balance among kings, lords and commons, according to Mr. A^dams's explanation of it, as can be imagined.

Without discriminating between the English theory, unattended by the system of paper and patronage, or influenced by it, Mr. Adams arranges the Roman, Lacedemonian, and other governments, in the class of mixed forms, together with the English | as being of a similar nature, and yielding similar inferences. If from this alliance, we are compelled for the sake of maintaining the consistency of Mr. Adams's arguments, to consider him as referring to the old English theory, the old practice, and the old balances, it follows, that his whole political system is built with materials which have vanished; and that it is as imaginary and romantick gravely to talk of patricians, plebeians, and feudal barons at this day, as it would be to propose the restoration of oracles', or the revival of chivalry.

To bring this argument within the full view of the reader, was one design for devoting so much time to the explanation of the new English system of paper and patronage; because, if it is proved, that this has made a material impression upon the balances of the old theory, it follows, that the English form of government has undergone a revolution; that the new system of paper and patronage, corrupts and destroys the old system of checks and balances; that if the American forms of government are, as Mr. Adams asserts, founded in the old theory of checks and balances, they are exposed to destruction by this new foe, which has evinced its power over that old theory, by undermining it in England: that M Adama'si argument is eminently