he fact is, that at the
formation of our government, many had formed their political opinions
on European writings and practices, believing the experience of old
countries, and especially of England, abusive as it was, to be a safer
guide than mere theory. The doctrines of Europe were, that men in
numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of order
and justice, but by forces physical and moral, wielded over them by
authorities independent of their will. Hence their organization of
kings, hereditary nobles, and priests. Still further to constrain the
brute force of the people, they deem it necessary to keep them down by
hard labor, poverty, and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees,
so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary
to obtain a sufficient surplus barely to sustain a scanty and miserable
life. And these earnings they apply to maintain their privileged orders
in splendor and idleness, to fascinate the eyes of the people, and
excite in them an humble adoration and submission, as to an order of
superior beings. Although few among us had gone all these lengths of
opinion, yet many had advanced, some more, some less, on the way. And in
the convention which formed our government, they endeavored to draw
the cords of power as tight as they could obtain them, to lessen the
dependence of the general functionaries on their constituents, to
subject to them those of the States, and to weaken their means of
maintaining the steady equilibrium which the majority of the convention
had deemed salutary for both branches, general and local. To recover,
therefore, in practice, the powers which the nation had refused, and to
warp to their own wishes those actually given, was the steady object of
the federal party. Ours, on the contrary, was to maintain the will
of the majority of the convention, and of the people themselves. We
believed, with them, that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature
with rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and that he could
be restrained from wrong and protected in right, by moderate powers,
confided to persons of his own choice, and held to their duties
by dependence on his own will. We believed that the complicated
organization of kings, nobles, and priests, was not the wisest nor best
to effect the happiness of associated man; that wisdom and virtue were
not hereditary; that the trappings of such a machinery consumed, by
their expense,