Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/666

654 identity for justifying tyranny in fact, because a government is free in form; and for defeating the responsibility of the government to the people, because the constitution was calculated to produce it; asserted and denied by both our parties, demonstrates that opinions fluctuate with power. From this undeniable fact it follows, that a nation and its governours can never entertain the same opinions. Nations will for ever wish to be free, and governours to be despotick. Future parties will not be less infected by power than former, and former have successively advanced the doctrine refuted by Sidney.

The parties called whig and tory in England, the first the disciple of Filmer and the other of Sidney, have conclusively settled the fact; and out of the demonstration have arisen the efforts of the United States for securing the general interest of the nation, against the ambition and avarice of the party of interest administering the government, by a string of moral precautions, endeavoured to be explained in this essay; such as responsibility, division of power, a sound militia, and a distribution of property by industry and talents and not by law. And if a nation should sacrifice to any governours whatsoever, these moral precautions for the preservation of its liberty, it is as certainly lost, as are the previous principles of every party by the acquisition of power.

The danger of parties to free governments, arises from the impossibility of controlling them by the restraints of political law; because being constituted upon selfish views, like a set of mountabanks combined to administer drugs for the sake of getting fees, the nature of the poison cannot be foreseen, nor an effectual antidote anticipated. No division of power, no responsibility, no periodical change of leaders, no limitation of thus far you may go and no farther," stops their career. In every form, therefore, they constitute the same avaricious or furious species of aristocracy, which would be produced by a form of government in the hands of a self constituted and uncontrolled body of men.