ing in the militia. Domestics, persons
receiving succour from the parishes, bankrupts, outlaws, and convicted
criminals, are perpetually excluded from the elective franchise.

This system, though far better than that of France, which establishes a
certain _amount_ of direct taxation, is radically vicious, as it makes
property, and that of a particular species, the test of power. It is, in
truth, the old English plan a little modified; and the recent revolution
that has lately taken place in England under the name of reform, goes to
prove that it is a system which contains in itself the seeds of vital
changes. As every political question is strictly one of practice,
_changes_ become necessary everywhere with the changes of circumstances,
and these are truly reforms; but when they become so serious as to
overturn principles, they produce the effects of revolutions, though
possibly in a mitigated form. Every system, therefore, should be so
framed as to allow of all the alterations which are necessary to
convenience, with a strict regard to its own permanency as connected
with its own governing principle. In America, in consequence of having
attended to this necessity from the commencement, we have undergone no
revolution in principle in half a century, though constantly admitting
of minor changes, while nearly all Europe has, either in theory or in
practice, or in both, been effectually revolutionized. Nor does the
short period from which our independent existence dates furnish any
argument against us, as it is not so much _time_, as the _changes_ of
which time is the parent, that tries political systems; and America has
undergone the ordinary changes, such as growth, extension of interests,
and the other governing circumstances of society, that properly belong
to two centuries, within the last fifty years. America to-day, in all
but government, is less like the America of 1776, than the France of
to-day is like the France of 1600. While it is the fashion to scout our
example as merely that of an untried experiment, ours is fast getting
to be the oldest political system in Christendom, as applied to one and
the same people. _Nations_ are not easily destroyed,--they exist under a
variety of mutations, and names last longer than things; but I now speak
in reference to distinguishing and prominent facts, without regard to
the various mystifications under which personal interests disguise
themselves.

LETTER XVIII.

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