lute, at best a mixed monarchy." The resolutions of the Kentucky legislature of November 1798, after stating a similar spirit in the federal government, observe "that these, and successive acts of the same character, unless arrested at the threshold, may tend to drive these states into revolution and blood, and will furnish new calumnies against republican governments, and new pretexts for those who wish it to be believed, that man cannot be governed but by a rod of iron."[1]
The spirit which produced these tendencies towards monarchy, revolution, and an iron gorernment, could only have been infused into the federal government by some principle of the general constitution. It was an evil moral spirit, and must therefore have proceeded from an evil moral cause. The concurrence of Congress in the measures charged with this spirit, is a proof of the great advances already made by executive influence, and the confidence of monarchists in executive power. And as a spirit propelling us towards monarchy, revolution and an iron government, appeared only after the great accumulation of executive power by the general constitution, the magician who raised it cannot be mistaken.
We have endeavoured to prove, that the elements of every government consisted of good or evil moral principles; and that the shock received by superstition from knowledge, and by feudality from alienation, has reduced the political competitors for human preference to the system of division and responsibility, or to that of paper and patronage; the first suggested by self government, the secondly the elements of fraud and force.
The measures arising from the spirit early infused into executive power by its American form, were, armies, war, penal lavws, and an increase of executive power by law, loans, banks, patronage and profusion. These are English effects, and evil effects. Do they proceed from no moral
- ↑ The Virginia resolutions were drawn by Mr. Madison; the Kentucky resolutions, by Mr. Jefferson.
