ife, shook down the temple of Dagon, and buried
himself and the Philistines again under its ruins.

The discourses of John Locke concerning government demolished while
they immortalized the work of Filmer, whose name and book are now
remembered only to be detested. But the first principles of morals and
politics, which have long been settled, acquire the authority of
self-evident truths, which, when first discussed, may have been
vehemently and portentously contested. John Locke, a kindred soul to
Algernon Sydney, seven years after his death published an elaborate
system of government, in which he declares the "false principles and
foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and his followers are detected and
overthrown." Subsequently, he published an essay concerning the true
original extent and end of civil government. "The principles," says Mr.
Adams, "of Sydney and Locke constitute the foundation of the North
American Declaration of Independence; and, together with the subsequent
writings of Montesquieu and Rousseau, that of the constitution of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and of the constitution of the United
States." Neither of these constitutions separately, nor the two in
combined harmony, can, without a gross and fraudulent perversion of
language, be termed a _Democracy_. They are neither democracy,
aristocracy, nor monarchy. They form together a mixed government,
compounded not only of the three elements of democracy, aristocracy,
and monarchy, but with a fourth added element, _Confederacy_. The
constitution of the United States when adopted was so far from being
considered as a democracy, that Patrick Henry charged it, in the
Virginia Convention, with an awful squinting towards monarchy. The
tenth number of the Federalist, written by James Madison, is an
elaborate and unanswerable essay upon the vital and radical difference
between a democracy and a republic. But it is impossible to disconnect
the relation between names and things. When the anti-federal party
dropped the name of Republicans to assume that of _Democrats_, their
principles underwent a corresponding metamorphosis; and they are now
the most devoted and most obsequious champions of executive power--the
very life-guard of the commander of the armies and navies of this
Union. The name of Democracy was assumed because it was discovered to
be _very taking_ among the multitude; yet, after all, it is but the
investment of the _multitude_ with absolute power.