It is impossible, that a balance of power among orders,
should produce the same effects, as the preponderance of
one. As the causes are widely different, so will be their
consequences. And it is unphilosophical to conclude, that
the moral beings, ambition, avarice, rivalry and hatred,
breathed into orders, by au equipoise, will, like the fear
breathed into the people by despotismn, beget political tranquillity.
Between the noxious alternatives, a warfare of orders and the quietism of tyranny, antiquity could discover no resource. The oscillations, both of political philosophy and vulgar prejudice, have been perpetual from one to the other, because miseries which have passed away, are gradually forgotten by miseries which are endured. And science, in this case, has been welded to ignorance, by the anguish of a common feeling, without searching for a remedy in the resources of intellect.
The new idea of rejecting both alternatives, was reserved for the new world. Instead of being a pendulum swing- ing between two curses, and capable of no enjoyment, except that which a change of pain may afford, the United States have rejected both the calm despotism of one order. and the turbulent counterpoise of several. Oppression, rivalry, civil war, ambition, and the whole tribe of moral effects, incident to these alternatives, will either disappear with their causes, or tinctures of such effects will be so many intellectual beacons, notifying to the nation of good moral beings, that their natural enemies are about to invade them.
It was reserved for the United States to discover, that by balancing man with man, and by avoiding the artificial combinations of exclusive privileges, no individual of these equipoised millions, would be incited by a probability of success, to assail the rest; and that thus the concussions of powerful combinations, and the subversion of liberty and happiness, following a victory on the part of one, would be avoided.
