tain
death to your liberty, as arsenic could be to your bodies.

LUTHER MARTIN.

_Baltimore, March 25, 1788._

Luther Martin, VI.

The Maryland Journal, (Number 1026)

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 1788.

Number IV.

TO THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND.

If those, my fellow citizens, to whom the administration of our government
was about to be committed, had sufficient wisdom never to err, and
sufficient goodness always to consult the true interest of the governed,
and if we could have a proper security that their successors should to the
end of time be possessed of the same qualifications, it would be
impossible that power could be lavished upon them with too liberal a hand.
Power absolute and unlimited, united with unerring wisdom and unbounded
goodness, is the government of the Deity of the universe. But remember, my
fellow citizens, that the persons to whom you are about to delegate
authority are and will be weak, erring mortals, subject to the same
passions, prejudices and infirmities with yourselves; and let it be deeply
engraven on your hearts, that from the first history of government to the
present time, if we begin with Nimrod and trace down the rulers of nations
to those who are now invested with supreme power, we shall find few, very
few, who have made the beneficent Governor of the universe the model of
their conduct, while many are they who, on the contrary, have imitated the
demons of the darkness. We have no right to expect that our rulers will be
more wise, more virtuous, or more perfect than those of other nations have
been, or that they will not be equally under the influence of ambition,
avarice and all that train of baleful passions, which have so generally
proved the curse of our unhappy race. We must consider mankind such as
they really are,--such as experience has shown them to be heretofore, and
bids us expect to find them hereafter,--and not suffer ourselves to be
misled by interested deceivers or enthusiastick visionaries; and therefore
in forming a system of government, to delegate no greater power than is
clearly and certainly necessary, ought to be the first principle with
every people who are influenced by reason and a regard for their safety,
and in doing this, they ought most solicitously to endeavour so to qualify
even that power, by such checks and restraints, as to produce a perfect
responsibility in those who are to exercise it, and prevent them from its
abuse with a chance of impunity;