constitution. And where the range of suffrage is wider,
but attended either by a greater portion of bank stock
or executive patronage, the tendency towards monarchy or
aristocracy is more visible, than where suffrage has been in
some degree limited to land, but attended with less stock
or patronage.
Popular governments and popular principles could not thus flow from the landed interest, if it possessed aristocratical qualities. Majorities only sustain such principles and governments. By sustaining them, the landed interest appears to cover a majority. Because it covers a majority, it does sustain them; it being impossible for a majority to maintain itself by oppressing a minority. Even the Goths and Vandals sought for plunder among great nations, not among little clans less wealthy than themselves.
The extent of our country would alone suffice to prove, that our landed interest cannot be an aristocracy or a monarch. Had the whole earth formed one nation, with the lands divided as they are in our portion of it, such a landed interest would have been as capable of constituting an aristocracy, as the lauded interest of the United Slates. It would have been the world itself: where would there have been other worlds, to bear its oppression or obey its power? Here it is the nation: where could it find subjects upon which to exercise an aristocratical spirit? If any species of master interest should be interpolated upon our policy, it cannot therefore be the landed; the alternative of which is limited by the laws of nature, to equal lights in a free government, or passive obedience under an arbitrary one.
We lose truth in names and phrases, as children lose themselves in a wood, for want of geographical knowledge. Because titles have been frequently annexed to aristocracy, it is erroneously imagined to be made by titles; and the thing dreaded can creep in, under an imagination, which cheats us into a belief, that its road lies through titles only. Lords without wealth, are an aristocracy, exemplified by the hierarchical power of American bishops.
