as essential to their security; as on the one hand it
fixes barriers which the ambitious and tyrannically disposed magistrate
dare not overleap, and on the other, becomes a wall of safety to the
community--otherwise stipulations between the governors and governed are
nugatory; and you might as well deposit the important powers of
legislation and execution in one or a few and permit them to govern
according to their disposition and will; but the world is too full of
examples, which prove that _to live by one man's will became the cause of
all men's misery_. Before the existence of express political compacts it
was reasonably implied that the magistrate should govern with wisdom and
justice; but mere implication was too feeble to restrain the unbridled
ambition of a bad man, or afford security against negligence, cruelty or
any other defect of mind. It is alleged that the opinions and manners of
the people of America are capable to resist and prevent an extension of
prerogative or oppression, but you must recollect that opinion and manners
are mutable, and may not always be a permanent obstruction against the
encroachments of government; that the progress of a commercial society
begets luxury, the parent of inequality, the foe to virtue, and the enemy
to restraint; and that ambition and voluptuousness, aided by flattery,
will teach magistrates where limits are not explicitly fixed to have
separate and distinct interests from the people; besides, it will not be
denied that government assimilates the manners and opinions of the
community to it. Therefore, a general presumption that rulers will govern
well is not a sufficient security. You are then under a sacred obligation
to provide for the safety of your posterity, and would you now basely
desert their interests, when by a small share of prudence you may transmit
to them a beautiful political patrimony, which will prevent the necessity
of their travelling through seas of blood to obtain that which your wisdom
might have secured? It is a duty you owe likewise to your own reputation,
for you have a great name to lose; you are characterized as cautious,
prudent and jealous in politics; whence is it therefore that you are about
to precipitate yourselves into a sea of uncertainty, and adopt a system so
vague, and which has discarded so many of your valuable rights? Is it
because you do not believe that an American can be a tyrant? If this be
the case, you rest on a weak basis: Am