Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

upon them. Without them, your commonwealth is no better than a scheme upon paper; and not a living, acting, effective conftitution. It is poffible, that through negligence, or ignorance, or defign artfully conducted, minifters may fuffer one part of government to languish, another to be perverted from its purposes, and every valuable intereft of the country to fall into ruin and decay, without poffibility of fixing any fingle act on which a criminal profecution can be juftly grounded. The due arrangement of men in the active part of the state, far from being foreign to the purposes of a wife government, ought to be among its very first and deareft objects. When, therefore, the abettors of the new system tell us, that between them and their oppofers there is nothing but a ftruggle for power, and that therefore we are no ways concerned in it; we must tell those who have the impudence to infult us in this manner, that of all things we ought to be the moft concerned, who and what fort of men they are, that hold the trust of every thing that is dear to us. Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what muft either render us totally defperate, or footh us into the fecurity of ideots. We must foften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy, to think all men virtuous. We muft be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. S 3 Men

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Men are in publick life as in private, fome good, fome evil. The elevation of the one, and the depreffion of the other, are the firft objects of all true policy. But that form of government, which, neither in its direct inftitutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has contrived to throw its affairs into the moft truft-worthy hands, but has left its whole executory fyftem to be difpofed of agreeably to the uncontrouled pleafure of any one man, however excellent or virtuous, is a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but confequentially erroneous in every part of it.

In arbitrary governments, the constitution of the miniftry follows the conftitution of the legiflature. Both the law and the magiftrate are the creatures of will. It must be fo. Nothing, indeed, will appear more certain, on any tolerable confideration of this matter, than that every fort of gocernment ought to have its adminiftration corres pondent to its legislature. If it thould be other

wife, things muft fall into an hideous diforder. The people of a free commonwealth, who have taken fuch care that their laws fhould be the refult of general confent, cannot be fo fenfelefs as to fuffer their executory fyftem to be compofed of perfons on whom they have no dependence, and whom no proofs of the publick love and confidence have recommended to thofe powers, upon the ufe of which the very being of the state depends.

The popular election of magiftrates, and popular difpofition of rewards and honours, is one of the firft advantages of a free ftate. Without it, or fomething equivalent to it, perhaps the people cannot long enjoy the fubftance of freedom; certainly none of the vivifying energy of good government. The frame of our commonwealth did not admit of fuch an actual election: but it provided as well, and (while the spirit of the conftitution is preserved) better for all the effects of it than by the method of fuffrage in any democratick state whatsoever. It had always, until of late, been held the first duty of Parliament, to refuse to fupport Government, until power was in the hands of perfons who were acceptable to the people, or while factions predominated in the Court in which the nation had no confidence. Thus all the good effects of popular election were fuppofed to be fecured to us, without the mischiefs attending on perpetual intrigue, and a diftinct canvafs for every particular office throughout the body of the people. This was the most noble and refined part of our conftitution. The people, by their representatives and grandees, were intrufted with a deliberative power in making laws; the king with the controul of his negative. The king was intrufted with the deliberative choice and the election to office; the people had the negative in a parliamentary refufal to fupport. Formerly this power of conS 4 troul

troul was what kept minifters in awe of parlia ments, and parliaments in reverence with the people. If the ufe of this power of controul on the system and perfons of administration is gone, every thing is loft, parliament and all. We may affure ourselves, that if parliament will tamely fee evil men take poffeffion of all the strong holds of their country, and allow them time and means to fortify themselves, under a pretence of giving them a fair trial, and upon a hope of difcovering, whether they will not be reformned by power, and whether their measures will not be better than their morals; fuch a parliament will give countenance to their measures alfo, whatever that parlia ment may pretend, and whatever thofe measures may be.

Every good political inftitution must have a preventive operation as well as a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad men from government, and not to truft for the fafety of the state to fubfequent punishment alone: punishment, which has ever been tardy and uncer tain; and which, when power is fuffered in bad hands, may chance to fall rather on the injured than the criminal.

Before men are put forward into the great trufts of the ftate, they ought by their conduct to have obtained fuch a degree of eftimation in their country, as may be fome fort of pledge and fecurity

to

to the publick, that they will not abuse those trusts. It is no mean fecurity for a proper use of power, that a man has fhewn by the general tenour of his actions, that the affection, the good opinion, the confidence, of his fellow citizens have been among the principal objects of his life; and that he has owed none of the gradations of his power or fortune to a fettled contempt, or occafional forfeiture of their efteem.

That man who before he comes into power has no friends, or who coming into power is obliged to desert his friends, or who lofing it has no friends to fympathize with him; he who has no fway among any part of the landed or commercial intereft, but whose whole importance has begun with his office, and is fure to end with it; is a perfon who ought never to be fuffered by a controuling parliament to continue in any of thofe fituations which confer the lead and direction of all our publick affairs; becaufe fuch a man has no connexion with the intereft of the people.

Those knots or cabals of men who have got together, avowedly without any publick principle, in order to fell their conjunct iniquity at the higher rate, and are therefore universally odious, ought never to be fuffered to domineer in the ftate; because they have no connexion with the fentiments and opinions of the people.

Thefe are confiderations which in my opinion

enforce

« AnteriorContinuar »