the multiplicity of
sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of
interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent
of country and number of people comprehended under the same government.
This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal
system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican
government, since it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of
the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States
oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best
security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class
of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and
independence of some member of the government, the only other security,
must be proportionately increased. Justice is the end of government. It
is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued
until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a
society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite
and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a
state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the
violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger
individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to
submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves;
so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be
gradually induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will
protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful. It can be
little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from
the Confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the
popular form of government within such narrow limits would be displayed
by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities that some power
altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the
voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of
it. In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great
variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition
of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other
principles than those of justice and the general good; whilst there
being thus less danger to a minor from the will of a major party, there
must be less pretext, also, to provide for th