END THEIR POWER
DIRECTLY OVER STATE AFFAIRS, THE LESS THEY, IN FACT, CONTROL THEM, AFTER
HAVING ONCE PASSED THE POINT OF NAMING LAWGIVERS AS THEIR
REPRESENTATIVES; MERELY BESTOWING ON A FEW ARTFUL MANAGERS THE INFLUENCE
THEY VAINLY IMAGINE TO HAVE SECURED TO THEMSELVES. This truth should be
written in letters of gold, at every corner of the streets and highways
in a republic; for truth it is, and truth, those who press the foremost
on another path will the soonest discover it to be. The mass _may_
select their representatives, _may_ know them, and _may_ in a good
measure so far sway them, as to keep them to their duties; but when a
constituency assumes to enact the part of executive and judiciary, they
not only get beyond their depth, but into the mire. What _can_, what
_does_ the best-informed layman, for instance, know of the
qualifications of this or that candidate to fill a seat on the bench! He
has to take another's judgment for his guide; and a popular appointment
of this nature, is merely transferring the nomination from an
enlightened, and, what is everything, a RESPONSIBLE authority, to one
that is unavoidably at the mercy of second persons for its means of
judging, and is as IRRESPONSIBLE AS AIR.

At one time, Mark Woolston regretted that he had not established an
opposition paper, in order to supply an antidote for the bane; but
reflection satisfied him it would have been useless. Everything human
follows its law, until checked by abuses that create resistance. This is
true of the monarch, who misuses power until it becomes tyranny; of the
nobles, who combine to restrain the monarch, until the throes of an
aristocracy-ridden country proclaim that it has merely changed places
with the prince; of the people, who wax fat and kick! Everything human
is abused; and it would seem that the only period of tolerable condition
is the transition state, when the new force is gathering to a head, and
before the storm has time to break. In the mean time, the earth
revolves, men are born, live their time, and die; communities are formed
and are dissolved; dynasties appear and disappear; good contends with
evil, and evil still has its day; the whole, however, advancing slowly
but unerringly towards that great consummation, which was designed from
the beginning, and which is as certain to arrive in the end, as that the
sun sets at night and rises in the morning. The supreme folly of the
hour is to imagine that perfection will