Page:Moyarra- An Australian Legend in Two Cantos, 1891.djvu/101

 The halls which once resounded to the voices of the great are defiled by the intrigues of the little, and England staggers in disordered course along the road, and driven by the same causes which have conducted ancient communities to ruin.

The sagacious Hamilton, and his coadjutors who provided safeguards in the Constitution of the United States, bore in mind the warnings of Montesquieu, who insisted on the necessity of an essential separation of the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial functions.

In some respects Hamilton's care has been rewarded; but degradation of the suffrage and dictations of a "caucus" have so far perverted the order of the last century as to present to us an organized State which prefers committing murders to amending its jury-law, or purifying its electorates.

But in the land "set in the silver sea," from which the French philosopher drew many of his arguments, the virtue he commended seems doomed.

Members of a body degraded in its own composition may be seen one day wallowing in the mire of criminal details, and on another revelling in aspersions against the judiciary.

When earthly things which deserve respect are traduced, "Reverence, that angel of the world," can hardly remain to hallow it, and debased generations may pollute the homes of God-fearing ancestors.

Already the sanction of an oath has been barred from one branch of Parliament in deference to insolence and intrigue; and if the same low arts succeed in banishing religion from schools, and in uprooting the national Church, a decay of the moral fibre of the nation must ensue.

But this end is not yet. The train is indeed laid for the