Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/96

86 similar to a law of prirmogeniture in respect to property. The objection to both is comprised in their enmity to the principle of division. This subject will occur again in a subsequent part of this essay.

Let us pause, and take a glance at the title of Mr. Adams's treatise. Why was it called "a defence of the constitutions of government of the United States of America?" It assails the principle, upon which these constitutions are founded; it asserts doctrines which they condemn; and it justifies a system of government which would be a revolution of them all. If this unsuitable title, arose from an incapacity to distinguish between the principles of our policy, and those of a system of balanced orders, the en'our is pardonable, and only destroys the authority of the treatise; but if it was an artifice, to mask under a pretended affection for our principles of government, an attack upon them, the erudition of the treatise Mill not be able to conceal, nor the freedom of political disquisition to justify, the insincerity of such an intention.

To prove the correctness of this criticism, it is necessary to return more particularly to Mr. Adams's treatise, for the purpose of elucidating its drift beyond the possibility of misapprehension. Thus also we shall advance in a knowledge of the policy of the United States, and of that of England; which are important objects of this essay.

The pretext for Mr. Adams's treatise, appears in the first page of the first volume, in the following extract of a letter from Mr. Turgot, to Doctor Price: "that he is not satisfied with the constitutions which have hitherto been formed for the different States of America. That by most of them the customs of England are imitafed, without any particular motive. Instead of collecting all authority into one centre, that of the nniion, they have established different bodies, a body of representatives, a council, and a governour, because there is in England a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They endeavour to balance these different powers, as if this