rily vested
in the Monarch_, _whether for the execution of the laws_, _or for the
nomination to magistracy and office_, _or for conducting the affairs of
peace and war_, _or for ordering the revenue_, _should all be exercised
upon public principles and national grounds_, _and not on the likings or
prejudices_, _the intrigues or policies of a Court_. This, I said, is
equal in importance to the securing a Government according to law. The
laws reach but a very little way. Constitute Government how you please,
infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the
powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of
Ministers of State. Even all the use and potency of the laws depends
upon them. Without them, your Commonwealth is no better than a scheme
upon paper; and not a living, active, effective constitution. It is
possible, that through negligence, or ignorance, or design artfully
conducted, Ministers may suffer one part of Government to languish,
another to be perverted from its purposes: and every valuable interest of
the country to fall into ruin and decay, without possibility of fixing
any single act on which a criminal prosecution can be justly grounded.
The due arrangement of men in the active part of the state, far from
being foreign to the purposes of a wise Government, ought to be among its
very first and dearest objects. When, therefore, the abettors of new
system tell us, that between them and their opposers there is nothing but
a struggle for power, and that therefore we are no-ways concerned in it;
we must tell those who have the impudence to insult us in this manner,
that, of all things, we ought to be the most concerned, who and what sort
of men they are, that hold the trust of everything that is dear to us.
Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what
must either render us totally desperate, or soothe us into the security
of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of
infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity
truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and
corrupt. Men are in public life as in private--some good, some evil. The
elevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the first
objects of all true policy. But that form of Government, which, neither
in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has
contrived to throw its affairs into the m