because he is surrounded with objects of oppression; and
majorities to do right, because they can find none. Their
errours of judgement are abandoned, so soon as they are
seen, whilst the despotism of one man is more strongly fortified for being discovered. The old analysis intrusts great
power to individuals and minorities; and provides no mode
of controlling their natural vicious propensities. Our policy deals out to them power more sparingly, and superadds
a sovereign, whose propensity is towards reason, and whose.
self interest is an excitement to justice. Such is the competitor of the sovereign of the old analysis, of which even its
advocate, Bolingbroke, admits, that a good one would be a
miracle. To avoid reasons, so strong in favour of our species of sovereignty, kings, nobles, and even mobs, have
claimed a divine right to govern, because there existed no
ground between the right of self government and authority
from God. It was obvious, that a nation, like an individual,
could never become a tyrant over itself, and therefore all
abuses of good moral principles, whether in the form
of the ancient analysis, or of the modern aristocracy of
paper and patronage, find means to control and defeat
national self government, either by the impiety of fathering
tyranny upon God, or by the fraud of admitting but evading
its pretensions. And though it is at length confessed, that
nations have a right to destroy tyrants, the difficulty of
finding a tyrant willing to be destroyed, remains. Monarchy, aristocracy, hierarchy, patronage, and ambition, still
urge every plea, however false, which transient circumstances may render plausible; even the paper aristocracy of the United States, though constructed of republicans, would surrender the sanctity of tyrannical kings, to secure a sanctity for tyrannical charters; and whilst it strives to find refuge for the latter, under some good word, joins in dragging the former from under the throne of God himself.
Although there is no middle ground between national and divine civil government, Montesquieu's position, "that virtue is necessary for the preservation of liberty," has long
