Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/205

 CH. X.] of the government. Caprice is just as mischievous, as folly, and corruption scarcely worse, than perpetual indecision and fluctuation. In this view, independent of its legislative functions, the participation of the senate in the functions of the executive, in appointing ambassadors, and in forming treaties with foreign nations, gives additional weight to the reasoning in favour of its prolonged term of service. A more full survey of its other functions will make that reasoning absolutely irresistible, if the object is, that they should be performed with independence, with judgment, and with scrupulous integrity and dignity.

§ 716. In answer to all reasoning of this sort, it has been strenuously urged, that a senate, constituted, not immediately by the people, for six years, may gradually acquire a dangerous pre-eminence in the government, and eventually transform itself into an aristocracy. Certainly, such a case is possible; but it is scarcely within the range of probability, while the people, or the government, are worthy of protection or confidence. Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty, as well as by the abuses of power. There are quite as numerous instances of the former, as of the latter. Yet, who would reason, that there should be no liberty, because it had been, or it might be, abused? Tyranny itself would not desire a more cogent argument, than that the danger of abuse was a ground for the denial of a right.

§ 717. But the irresistible reply to all such reasoning is, that before such a revolution can be effected, the