A government must be imperfect,indeed,if it require such a degree of virtue in the people as renders all government unnecessary.Government is founded,not in the virtues,but in the vices of mankind;not in their knowledge and wisdom,but in their ignorance and folly.Its object is to protect the weak,to restrain the violent,to punish the vicious,and to compel all to the performance of the duty which man owes to man in a social state.It is not a self-acting machine,which will go on and perform its work without human agency;it cannot be separated from the human beings who fill its places,set in motion,and regulate and direct its operations.
So long as these are liable to err in judgment,or to fail in virtue,so long will government be liable to run into abuses.Until all men shall become so perfect as not to require to be ruled,all governments professing to be free will require to be watched,guarded,checked and controlled.
To do this effectually requires more than we generally find of public virtue and public intelligence.A great majority of mankind are much more sensible to their interests than to their rights.Whenever the people can be persuaded that it is their greatest interest to maintain their rights,then,and then only,will free government be safe from abuses.
Looking at our own Federal Government,apart from the States,and regarding it,as Judge Story would have us,as a consolidated government of all the people of the United States,we shall not find in it this salutary countervailing interest.In an enlarged sense,it is,indeed,the greatest interest of all to support that government in its purity;for,although it is undoubtedly defective in many important respects,it is much the best that has yet been devised.Unhappily,however,the greatest interest of the whole is not felt to be,although in truth it is,the greatest interest of all the parts.This results from the fact,that our character is not homogeneous,and our pursuits are wholly different.Rightly understood,these facts should tend to bind us the more closely together,by showing us our dependence upon each other;and it should teach us the necessity of watching,with the greater jealousy,every departure from the strict principles of our union.It is a truth,however,no less melancholy than incontestable,that if this ever was the view of the people,it has ceased to be so.And it could not be otherwise.Whatever be the theory of our Constitution,its practice,of late years,has made it a consolidated government;the government of an irresponsible majority.If that majority can find,either in the pursuits of their own peculiar industry,or in the offices and emoluments which flow from the patronage of the government,an interest distinct from that of the minority,they will pursue that interest,and nothing will be left to the minority but the poor privilege of complaining.Thus the government becomes tyrannous and oppressive,precisely in proportion as its democratic principle is extended;and instead of the enlarged and general interest which should check and restrain it,a peculiar interest is enlisted,to extend its powers and sustain its abuses.Public virtue and intelligence avail little,in such a condition of things as this.That virtue falls before the temptation's of interest which you present to it,and that intelligence,thus deprived of its encouraging hopes,serves only to point out new objects of unlawful pursuit,and suggest new and baser methods of attaining them.
This result could scarcely be brought about,if the Federal Government were allowed to rest on the principles upon which I have endeavored to place it.The checking and controlling influences which afford safety to public liberty,are not to be found in the government itself.The people cannot always protect themselves against their rulers;if they could,no free government,in past times,would have been overthrown.Power and patronage cannot easily be so limited and defined,as to rob them of their corrupting influences over the public mind.It is truly and wisely remarked by the Federalist,that "a power over a man's subsistence is a power over his will."As little as possible of this power should be entrusted to the Federal Government,and even that little should be watched by a power authorized and competent to arrest its abuses.That power can be found only in the States.In this consists the great superiority of the federative system over every other.In that system,the Federal Government is responsible,not directly to the people en masse,but to the people in their character of distinct political corporations.However easy it may be to steal power from the people,governments do not so readily yield to one another.The confederated States confer on their common government only such power as they themselves cannot separately exercise,or such as can be better exercised by that government.They have,therefore,an equal interest,to give it power enough,and to prevent it from assuming too much.In their hands,the power of interposition is attended with no danger;it may be safely lodged where there is no interest to abuse it.
Under a federative system,the people are not liable to be acted on (at least,not to the same extent),by those influences which are so apt to betray and enslave them,under a consolidated government Popular masses,acting under the excitements of the moment,are easily led into fatal errors.
