power of distributing wealth, the latter must be least oppressive, because it is less expensive to gratify the rapaciousness of one than of many. Accordingly, spurious republicks, or those exercising this power, universally afflict
the people with the heaviest taxes. Life is not without its
evils, though spent in the lap of a genuine republican government; but morbid ideas of imaginary perfection, or
the disposition of ignorance to encounter unknown evils to
escape from present inconveniences, too often draw us out
of limited happiness into unlimited tyranny. If we should
exchange a bed of down for a bed of thorns, because we
sometimes rested badly, we should resemble the nations
who have preferred a distribution of property by the will
of a government, to its genuine republican distribution by
industry, talents and labour.
It was an early discovery, that conscience was an insufficient security for justice between man and man; but the insufficiency of the same security for justice on the part of governments to nations, was never distinctly perceived before the American revolution. Out of the complete discovery then made, arose our political laws for assisting the consciences of governours; and if they can emancipate themselves from restraint by civil laws, sowing cancerous seeds in the body politick, the discovery will probably be lost forever.
If separate legal orders or interests are the causes of social oppression, free government ensues of course, by avoiding them. If a combination among the legal distributees of wealth, generates the kind of government existing in England, then the same kind of government naturally ensues here from the system of distributing wealth by law. Mr. Adams's book contains an extensive collection of the causes which have produced tyranny. These are unexceptionably, the separate interests of legal privileges or emoluments. As to the evil we agree; in the remedy we differ. Introduce, says he, the cause, to prevent the effect; expel it, say I, for the same end.
