GOVERNANCE
Should our Convention propose to establish now
a form of government perhaps it might be agreeable to recall for a
short time their delegates. It is a work of the most interesting
nature and such as every individual would wish to have his voice in.
In truth it is the whole object of the present controversy; for
should a bad government be instituted for us in future it had been
as well to have accepted at first the bad one offered to us from
beyond the water without the risk and expense of contest.
|
Thomas
Nelson
16 May 1776 |
GOVERNMENT
/ BRITAIN
The hint to the two belligerents of disarming
each other of their auxiliaries, by opening asylums to them and
giving them passages to this country, is certainly a good one.
Bonaparte has mind enough to adopt it, but not the means. England,
again, has the means but not mind enough; she would prefer losing an
advantage over her enemy to giving one to us. It is an unhappy state
of mind for her, but I am afraid it is the true one. She presents a
singular phenomenon of an honest people whose constitution, from its
nature, must render their government forever dishonest; and
accordingly, from the time that Sir Robert Walpole gave the
constitution that direction which its defects permitted, morality
has been expunged from their political code. |
James
Ronaldson
3 Dec 1810 |
GOVERNMENT
/ CHECKS AND BALANCES
To make us one nation as to foreign concerns,
and keep us distinct in domestic ones, gives the outline of the
proper division of powers between the general and particular
governments. But, to enable the federal head to exercise the powers
given it to best advantage, it should be organized as the particular
ones are, into legislative, executive, and judiciary. The first and
last are already separated. The second should be. When last with
Congress, I often proposed to members to do this, by making of the
committee of the States, an executive committee during the recess of
Congress, and, during its sessions, to appoint a committee to
receive and despatch all executive business, so that Congress itself
should meddle only with what should be legislative. But I question
if any Congress (much less all successively) can have self-denial
enough to go through with this distribution. The distribution, then,
should be imposed on them. |
James
Madison
16 Dec 1786 |
GOVERNMENT
/ DEMOCRATIC
I deplore, with you, the putrid state into
which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity,
and mendacious spirit of those who write for them. …These
ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste. and lessening its
relish for sound food. As vehicles of information, and a curb on our
functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless, by forfeiting
all title to belief. That this has, in a great degree, been produced
by the violence and malignity of party spirit, I agree with you; and
I have read with great pleasure the paper you enclosed me on that
subject. There was but a single passage where I wished a little more
development of a very sound and catholic idea; a single
intercalation to rest it solidly on true bottom. It is near the end
of the first page, where you make a statement of genuine republican
maxims; saying, "that the people ought to possess as much
political power as can possibly exist with the order and security of
society." Instead of this, I would say, "that the people,
being the only safe depository of power, should exercise in person
every function which their qualifications enable them to exercise,
consistently with the order and security of society; that we now
find them equal to the election of those who shall be invested with
their executive and legislative powers, and to act themselves in the
judiciary, as judges in questions of fact; that the range of their
powers ought to be enlarged," etc. This gives both the reason
and exemplification of the maxim you express, "that they ought
to possess as much political power," etc. I see nothing to
correct either in your facts or principles. |
Walter
Jones
2 Jan 1814 |
GOVERNMENT
/ FORMS OF
I am sensible that your situation must have
been difficult during the transition from the late form of
government to the re-establishment of some other legitimate
authority, and that you may have been at a loss to determine with
whom business might be done. Nevertheless, when principles are well
understood, their application is less embarrassing. We surely cannot
deny to any nation that right whereon our own government is founded,
that every one may govern itself according to whatever form it
pleases, and change these forms at its own will; and that it may
transact its business with foreign nations through whatever organ it
thinks proper, whether King, Convention, Assembly, Committee,
President, or anything else it may choose. The will of the nation is
the only thing essential to he regarded.
Mutual good offices, mutual affection, and similar principles of
government, seem to destine the two nations for the most intimate
communion; and I cannot too much press it on you, to improve every
opportunity which may occur in the changeable scenes which are
passing, and to seize them as they occur, for placing our commerce
with that nation and its dependencies, on the freest and most
encouraging footing possible. |
Gouverneur
Morris
12 Mar 1793 |
GOVERNMENT
/ JUST
… A consciousness of those in power that
their administration of the public affairs has been honest, may,
perhaps, produce too great a degree of indignation; and those
characters, wherein fear predominates over hope, may apprehend too
much from these instances of irregularity. They may conclude too
hastily, that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other
government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor
experience. Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently
distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2.
Under governments, wherein the will of every one has a just
influence; as is the case in England, in a slight degree, and in our
States, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force; as is the
case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics. To
have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must
be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem,
not clear in my mind, that the first condition is not the best. But
I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population.
The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind
under that, enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It
has its evils, too; the principal of which is the turbulence to
which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of
monarchy, and it becomes nothing. …Even this evil is productive
of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a
general attention to the public affairs. I hold it, that a little
rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the
political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions,
indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the
people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth
should render honest republican governors so mild in their
punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is
a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
|
James
Madison
30 Jan 1787 |
GOVERNMENT
/ JUST
I am to thank you, my dear sir, for forwarding
M. D'Ivernois' book on the French Revolution. I receive everything
with respect which comes from him. But it is on politics, a subject
I never loved and now hate. I will not promise therefore to read it
thoroughly. I fear the oligarchical executive of the French will not
do. We have always seen a small council get into cabals and
quarrels, the more bitter and relentless the fewer they are. We saw
this in our committee of the States; and that they were from their
bad passions, incapable of doing the business of their country. I
think that for the prompt, clear and consistent action so necessary
in an executive, unity of person is necessary as with us. …
This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that
their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere
force. We have seen no instance of this since the days of the Roman
republic, nor do we read of any before that. Either force or
corruption has been the principle of every modern government, unless
the Dutch perhaps be excepted, and I am not well enough informed to
except them absolutely. If ever the morals of a people could be made
the basis of their own government, it is our case; and who could
propose to govern such a people by the corruption of a legislature,
before he could have one night of quiet sleep must convince himself
that the human soul as well as body is mortal. I am glad to see that
whatever grounds of apprehension may have appeared of a wish to
govern us otherwise than on principles of reason and honesty, we are
getting the better of them. I am sure from the honesty of your
heart, you join me in detestation of the corruptions of the English
government, and that no man on earth is more incapable than yourself
of seeing that copied among us, willingly. I have been among those
who have feared the design to introduce it here, and it has been a
strong reason with me for wishing there was an ocean of fire between
that island and us. But away politics. |
John
Adams
28 Feb 1796 |
GOVERNMENT
/ JUST POWERS
I do then, with sincere zeal, wish an
inviolable preservation of our present federal Constitution,
according to the true sense in which it was adopted by the States,
that in which it was advocated by its friends, and not that which
its enemies apprehended, who therefore became its enemies; and I am
opposed to the monarchizing its features by the forms of its
administration with a view to conciliate a first transition to a
President and Senate for life and from that to a hereditary tenure
of these offices, and thus to worm out the elective principle. I am
for preserving to the States the powers not yielded by them to the
Union, and to the legislature of the Union its constitutional share
in the division of powers, and I am not for transferring all the
powers of the States to the General Government and all those of that
government to the executive branch. I am for a government rigorously
frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public
revenue to the discharge of the national debt, and not for a
multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans,
and for increasing, by every device, the public debt on the
principle of its being a public blessing. I am for relying, for
internal defense, on our militia solely till actual invasion and for
such a naval force only as may protect our coasts and harbors from
such depredations as we have experienced, and not for a standing
army in time of peace, which may overawe the public sentiment; nor
for a navy which, by its own expenses and the eternal wars in which
it will implicate us, will grind us with public burdens and sink us
under them. I am for free commerce with all nations, political
connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment. And
I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of
Europe, entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance,
or joining in the confederacy of kings to war against the principles
of liberty. I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers
to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another; for
freedom of the press and against all violations of the Constitution
to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms,
just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.
And I am for encouraging the progress of science in all its
branches; and not for raising a hue and cry against the sacred name
of philosophy; for awing the human mind by stories of raw head and
bloody bones to a distrust of its own vision and to repose
implicitly on that of others; to go backward instead of forward to
look for improvement; to believe that government, religion,
morality, and every other science were in the highest perfection in
ages of the darkest ignorance, and that nothing can ever be devised
more perfect than what was established by our forefathers. To these
I will add that I was a sincere well-wisher to the success of the
French Revolution and still wish it may end in the establishment of
a free and well-ordered republic; but I have not been insensible
under the atrocious depredations they have committed on our
commerce. The first object of my heart is my own country. In that is
embarked my family, my fortune, and my own existence. I have not one
farthing of interest, nor one fiber of attachment out of it, nor a
single motive of preference of any one nation to another but in
proportion as they are more or less friendly to us.
|
Elbridge
Gerry
26 Jan 1799 |
GOVERNMENT
/ JUST PRINCIPLES OF
No experiment can be more interesting than that
we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the
fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object
should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth.
The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It
is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation
of their actions. The firmness with which the people have withstood
the late abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested
between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to
hear everything true and false, and to form a correct judgment
between them. As little is it necessary to impose on their senses,
or dazzle their minds by pomp, splendor, or forms. Instead of this
artificial, how much surer is that real respect, which results from
the use of their reason, and the habit of bringing everything to the
test of common sense.
I hold it, therefore, certain, that to open the doors of truth, and
to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason, are the most
effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to
prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.
|
Judge
John Tyler
28 Jun 1804 |
GOVERNMENT
/ JUST PRINCIPLES
When we come to the moral principles on which
the government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for
all conditions of society... Liberty, truth, probity, honor, are
declared to be the four cardinal principles of society. I believe...
that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the
human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force.
|
Pierre
Samuel Dupont de Nemours
1816 |
GOVERNMENT
/ JUST PRINCIPLES
I received, my dear friend, your letter
covering the constitution for your Equinoctial republics. . . . I
suppose it well-formed for those for whom it was intended, and the
excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of
those to be governed by it. For us it would not do. Distinguishing
between the structure of the government and the moral principles on
which you prescribe its administration, with the latter we concur
cordially, with the former we should not. We of the United States,
you know, are constitutionally and conscientiously democrats. We
consider society as one of the natural wants with which man has been
created; that he has been endowed with faculties and qualities to
effect its satisfaction by concurrence of others having the same
want; that when, by the exercise of these faculties, he has procured
a state of society, it is one of his acquisitions which he has a
right to regulate and control, jointly indeed with all those who
have concurred in the procurement, whom he cannot exclude from its
use or direction more than they him. We think experience has proved
it safer, for the mass of individuals composing the society, to
reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers
to which they are competent, and to delegate those to which they are
not competent to deputies named, and removable for unfaithful
conduct by themselves immediately. Hence, with us, the people (by
which is meant the mass of individuals composing the society) being
competent to judge of the facts occurring in ordinary life, they
have retained the functions of judges of facts under the name of
jurors; but being unqualified for the management of affairs
requiring intelligence above the common level, yet competent judges
of human character, they chose, for their management,
representatives, some by themselves immediately, others by electors
chosen by themselves. …
But when we come to the moral principles on which the government is
to be administered, we come to what is proper for all conditions of
society. I meet you there in all the benevolence and rectitude of
your native character, and I love myself always most where I concur
most with you. Liberty, truth, probity, honor are declared to be the
four cardinal principles of your society. I believe with you that
morality, compassion, generosity are innate elements of the human
constitution; that there exists a right independent of force; that a
right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with
which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what
we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of
other sensible beings; that no one has a right to obstruct another
exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities
made a part of his nature; that justice is the fundamental law of
society; that the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a
crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the
strongest breaks up the foundations of society; that action by the
citizens in person, in affairs within their reach and competence,
and in all others by representatives, chosen immediately and
removable by themselves, constitutes the essence of a republic; that
all governments are more or less republican in proportion as this
principle enters more or less into their composition; and that a
government by representation is capable of extension over a greater
surface of country than one of any other form. These, my friend, are
the essentials in which you and I agree; however, in our zeal for
their maintenance we may be perplexed and divaricate as to the
structure of society most likely to secure them.
In the constitution of Spain, as proposed by the late Cortes, there
was a principle entirely new to me and not noticed in yours, that no
person born after that day should ever acquire the rights of
citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible
sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those
which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the
administration of the government, constant ralliance to the
principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the
progressive advances of the human mind or changes in human affairs,
it is the most effectual. Enlighten the people generally, and
tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil
spirits at the dawn of day. Although I do not with some enthusiasts
believe that the human condition will ever advance to such a state
of perfection as that there shall no longer be pain or vice in the
world, yet I believe it susceptible of much improvement, and most of
all in matters of government and religion, and that the diffusion of
knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to
be effected. |
Pierre
Samuel Dupont de Nemours
24 Apr 1816 |
GOVERNMENT
/ JUST PRINCIPLES OF
With respect to our rights, and the acts of the
British government contravening those rights, there was but one
opinion on this side of the water. All American Whigs thought alike
on these subjects. When forced, therefore, to resort to arms for
redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper
for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of
Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments,
never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never
been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of
the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent,
and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled
to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment,
nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was
intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to
that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the
occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments
of the, day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed
essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle,
Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc. |
Henry
Lee
8 May 1825 |
GOVERNMENT
/ LEGISLATIVE BRANCH
I have read your book with infinite
satisfaction and improvement. It will do great good in America. Its
learning and its good sense will, I hope, make it an institute for
our politicians, old as well as young. There is one opinion in it,
however, which I will ask you to reconsider, because it appears to
me not entirely accurate, and not likely to do good. Page 362, "Congress
is not a legislative, but a diplomatic assembly." Separating
into parts the whole sovereignty of our States, some of these parts
are yielded to Congress. Upon these I should think them both
legislative and executive, and that would have been judiciary also,
had not the confederation required them for certain purposes to
appoint a judiciary. It has accordingly been the decision of our
courts that the confederation is a part of the law of the land, and
superior in authority to the ordinary laws, because it cannot be
altered by the legislature of any one State. I doubt whether they
are at all a diplomatic assembly. |
John
Adams
23 Feb 1787 |
GOVERNMENT
/ LOCAL / RESPONSIBILITIES OF
My letter of the 24th ultimo conveyed to you
the grounds of the two articles objected to in the College bill.
Your last presents one of them in a new point of view, that of the
commencement of the war4 schools as likely to render the law
unpopular to the country. It must be a very inconsiderate and rough
process of execution that would do this. My idea of the mode of
carrying it into execution would be this: Declare the county
ipso facto divided into wards for the present, by the boundaries
of the militia, captaincies; somebody attend the ordinary muster of
each company, having first desired the captain to call together a
full one. There explain the object of the law to the people of the
company, put to their vote whether they will have a school
established, and the most central and convenient place for it; get
them to meet and build a log school-house; have a roll taken of the
children who would attend it, and of those of them able to pay.
These would probably be sufficient to support a common teacher,
instructing gratis the few unable to pay. If there should be a
deficiency, it would require too trifling a contribution from the
county to be complained of; and especially as the whole county would
participate, where necessary, in the same resource. Should the
company, by its vote, decide that it would have no school, let them
remain without one. The advantages of this proceeding would be that
it would become the duty of the alderman elected by the county, to
take an active part in pressing the introduction of schools, and to
look out for tutors. If, however, it is intended that the State
government shall take this business into its own hands, and provide
schools for every county, then by all means strike out this
provision of our bill. I would never wish that it should be placed
on a worse footing than the rest of the State. But if it Is believed
that these elementary schools will be better managed by the Governor
and Council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other
general authority of the government, than by the parents within each
ward, it is a belief against all experience. Try the principle one
step further, and amend the bill so as to commit to the Governor and
Council the management of all our farms, our mills, and merchants'
stores. No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is
not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many,
distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.
Let the national government be entrusted with the defence of the
nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments
with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what
concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns
of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself.
It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great
national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in
the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under
every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done
for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in
every government which has ever existed under the sun? The
generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body,
no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the
aristocrats of a Venetian senate. And I do believe that if the
Almighty has not decreed that man shall never be free, (and it is a
blasphemy to believe it,) that the secret will be found to be in the
making himself the depository of the powers respecting himself, so
far as he is competent to them, and delegating only what is beyond
his competence by a synthetical process, to higher and higher orders
of functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer powers in
pr6portlon as the trustees become more and more oligarchical. The
elementary republics of the wards, the county republics, the State
republics, and the republic of the Union, would form a gradation of
authorities, standing each on the basis of law, holding every one
its delegated share of powers, and constituting truly a system of
fundamental balances and checks for the government. Where every man
is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic, or of some of the
higher ones, and feels that he is a participator in the government
of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every
day; when there shall not be a man in the State who will not be a
member of some one of its councils, great or small, he will let the
heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from
him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte. How powerfully did we feel the
energy of this organization in the case of embargo? I felt the
foundations of the government shaken under my feet by the New
England townships. There was not an individual in their States whose
body was not thrown with all its momentum into action; and although
the whole of the other States were known to be in favor of the
measure, yet the organization of this little selfish minority
enabled it to overrule the Union. What would the unwieldy counties
of the Middle, the South, and the West do? Call a county meeting,
and the drunken loungers at and about the court-houses would have
collected, the distances being too great for the good people and the
industrious generally to attend. The character of those who really
met would have been the measure of the weight they would have had in
the scale of public opinion. As Cato, then, concluded every speech
with the words, "Carthago delenda est," so do I
every opinion, with the injunction, "divide the counties into
wards." Begin them only for a single purpose; they will soon
show for what others they are the best instruments. God bless you,
and all our rulers, and give them the wisdom, as I am sure they have
the will, to fortify us against the degeneracy of our government,
and the concentration of all its powers in the hands of the one, the
few, the wellborn or the many. |
Joseph
C. Cabell
2 Feb 1816 |
GOVERNMENT
/ MONARCHY
I am astonished at some people's considering a
kingly government as a refuge. Advise such to read the fable of the
frogs who solicited Jupiter for a king. If that does not put them to
rights, send them to Europe to see something of the trappings of
monarchy, and I will undertake that every man shall go back
thoroughly cured. If all the evils which can arise among us, from
the republican form of our government, from this day to the day of
judgment, could be put into a scale against what this country
suffers from its monarchical form in a week, or England in a month,
the latter would preponderate. Consider the contents of the Red Book
in England, or the Almanac Royal in France, and say what a people
gain by monarchy. No race of kings has ever presented above one man
of common sense in twenty generations. The best they can do is to
leave things to their ministers; and what are their ministers but a
committee, badly chosen? If the king ever meddles, it is to do harm.
|
Benjamin
Hawkins
4 Aug 1787 |
GOVERNMENT
/ MONARCHY AND ARISTOCRACY
For five and thirty years we have walked
together through a land of tribulations. Yet these have passed away,
and so, I trust, will those of the present day. The toryism with
which we struggled in differed but in name from the federalism of
'99, with which we struggled also; and the Anglicism of 1808,
against which we are now struggling, is but the same thing still in
another form. It is a longing for a King, and an English King rather
than any other. …It may be asked, what, in the nature of her
government, unfits England for the observation of moral duties? In
the first place, her King is a cypher; his only function being to
name the oligarchy which is to govern her. The parliament is, by
corruption, the mere instrument of the will of the administration.
The real power and property in the government is in the great
aristocratical families of the nation. The nest of office being too
small for all of them to cuddle into at once, the contest is
eternal, which shall crowd the other out. For this purpose, they are
divided into two parties, the Ins and the Outs, so equal in weight
that a small matter turns the balance. To keep themselves in, when
they are in, every stratagem must be practiced, every artifice used
which may flatter the pride, the passions or power of the nation.
Justice, honor, faith must yield to the necessity keeping themselves
in place. The question whether a measure is moral, is never asked;
but whether it will nourish the avarice of their merchants, or the
piratical spirit of their navy, or produce any other effect which
may strengthen them in their places. As to engagements, however
positive, entered into by the predecessors of the Ins, why, they
were their enemies; they did everything which was wrong; and to
reverse everything which they did, must, therefore, be right. This
is the true character of the English government in practice, however
different its theory; and it presents the singular phenomenon of a
nation, the individuals of which are as 'faithful to their private
engagements and duties, as honorable, as worthy, as those of any
nation on earth, and whose government is yet the most unprincipled
at this day known. In an absolute government there can be no such
equiponderant parties. The despot is the government. His power
suppressing all opposition, maintains his ministers firm in their
places. What he has contracted, therefore, through them, he has the
power to observe with good faith; and he identifies his own honor
and faith with that of his nation.
When I observed, however, that the King of England was a cypher, I
did not mean to confine the observation to the mere individual now
on that throne. The practice of Kings marrying only in the families
of Kings, has been that of Europe for some centuries. Now, take any
race of animals, confine them in idleness and inaction, whether in a
stye, a stable or a state-room, pamper them with high diet, gratify
all their sexual appetites, immerse them in sensualities, nourish
their passions, let everything bend before them, and banish whatever
might lead them to think, and in a few generations they become all
body and no mind; and this, too, by a law of nature, by that very
law by which we are in the constant practice of changing the
characters and propensities of the animals we raise for our own
purposes. Such is the regimen in raising Kings, and in this way they
have gone on for centuries. While in Europe, I often amused myself
with contemplating the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of
Europe. Louis the XVI. was a fool, of my own knowledge, and in
despite of the answers made for him at his trial. The King of Spain
was a fool, and of Naples the same. They passed their lives in
hunting, and despatched two couriers a week, one thousand miles, to
let each other know what game they had killed the preceding days.
The King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons. The Queen
of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature. And so was the King
of Denmark. Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of
government. The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick,
was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus of Sweden, and
Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of England, you
know, was in a straight waistcoat. There remained, then, none but
old Catharine, who had been too lately picked up to have lost her
common sense. In this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was this
state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle. These
animals had become without mind and powerless; and so will every
hereditary monarch be after a few generations. Alexander, the
grandson of Catharine, is as yet an exception. He is able to hold
his own. But he is only of the third generation. His race is not yet
worn out. And so endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom the Lord
deliver us, and have you, my friend, and all such good men and true,
in His holy keeping. |
John
Langdon
(Governor of New Hampshire)
5 Mar 1810 |
GOVERNMENT
/ OBJECT OF
The only orthodox object of the institution of
government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to
the general mass of those associated under it. The events which this
work proposes to embrace will establish the fact that unless the
mass retains sufficient control over those intrusted with the powers
of their government, these will be perverted to their own
oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the
individuals and their families selected for the trust. Whether our
Constitution has hit on the exact degree of control necessary, is
yet under experiment; and it is a most encouraging reflection that
distance and other difficulties securing us against the brigand
governments of Europe, in the safe enjoyment of our farms and
firesides, the experiment stands a better chance of being
satisfactorily made here than on any occasion yet presented by
history. |
F.
A. Van der Kemp
22 Mar 1812 |
|
