Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/71

Rh Truth is trammelled in a monarchy, the system dreading collision with a power so dangerous to all factitious and one-sided theories.

Monarchies, especially those in which the crown possesses a real and predominant power, discourage sincerity and frankness of character, substituting appearances for virtue, and flattery and deception for wholesome facts.

Women often exercise an improper influence, and this from an impure motive, in monarchies, history tracing even wars to the passions of an offended mistress.

The public money is diverted from legitimate objects, to those which support the personal views, passions, caprices, or enmities of the prince.

Monarchies are subject to all those abuses, which depend on an irresponsible administration of power, and an absence of publicity; abuses that oppress the majority for the benefit of a few, and which induce subserviency of character, frauds, flatteries and other similar vices.

If, in this age, monarchies exhibit these results of the system in milder forms, than in other centuries, it is owing to the increasing influence of the people, who may control systems, though in a less degree, indirectly as well as directly.