Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/8

 contemporaneous suggestions of these occurrences or of experience, designed to portray human nature in a political state, and to explain the moral principles capable of foretelling its actions, and controlling its vices.

Monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, appeared to the author to be inartificial, rude, and almost savage political fabricks ; and the idea of building a new one with the materials they could afford, seemed like that of erecting a palace with materials drawn from Indian cabins. He thought that these respectable commentators, in making the attempt, had allowed little or nothing new or pre-eminent to the policy of the United States ; had overlooked both the foundation and the beautiful entablature of its pillars; and had left mankind still enchanted within the magick circle of the numerical analysis.

Believing that the true value and real superiority of our policy consisted in its good moral principles ; that these principles were the only worthy object of national affection, and the only just solution of the ill success of other governmeiits and of the wonderful prosperity of our own ; that by transplanting it upon the British substratum, maxims and measures destructive to ours, however calculated for their political system, would be introduped; that the danger of this appiosimation was greatly augmented, by the respect which the English form of government attracts as the work of our gallant ancestors, the source of our affection for liberty, and the solitary rival of our own; that the belief of such an affinity, would enable legislation to draw the confines of the two forms of government so near together, that a step or even a stumble might pass from one to the other; and that a disclosure of the contrariety in their principles, might become a beacon against an exchange of good and lasting moral principles, for cobweb and fluctuating numerical balances; the author of these essays concluded, that the next age ought not to be deluded, by the silence of its predecessor, into a belief that this affinity was generally allowed.

Although the elevation of the British form of government, produced by a fetv moral n.inciplts, violently and of course clumsily thrust under it at different times, cnnsiituted the American observatory at the epoch of the revolution ; front whence, through the telescope, necessity, new principles wire discovered, now confirmed by the distinct experience of each state for periods,