Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/602

more dangerous to our policy than superstition, nobility, and exclusive privilege united; because these could only sap it slowly, whilst that can carry it by storm. Hence this instrument, so well adapted for its destruction, is attempted to be withheld from executive power. But no provisions enforce the prohibition, and no precautions against executive intrigues with party spirit, the influence of patronage, nor the precipitancy of passion, are resorted to. The most trivial law is suspended for the president's concurrence, and the most trivial amendment of the constitution must receive a chaste national approbation; but a law for war is absolved from this cheek, and unsubjected to publick opinion. Party legislation converts the constitutional precaution into an aggravation of the danger, and restores the knife to the president, freed from any responsibility for using it. Twenty six per centum of the legislature, being the dictators of a party predominancy of fifty one per centum, in virtue of the party loyalty spread by fashion over perjury and treason, like embroidery over putrescence, holds in fact the power of declaring war; and political fashion, having thus diminished the work for the blandishments of flattery, the prejudices of party spirit, and the allurements of executive patronage, then covers the real authors of war against responsibility, under the canopy of a fraudulent majority, and the justification of a national concurrence, drawn from a false appearance. The gradation of reasoning, "that each individual ought to be governed by the majority of some party: that a majority thus obtained, is a genuine republican majority: and that it is both the government and the nation," seizes upon the amiable and honest respect of the people for their representatives, and rewards them for their virtues by the calamities of a war, entered into contrary to the true wishes of themselves. and of those who have thus sacrificed a virtuous to a wicked allegiance. Other less important consequences of party allegiance might have been cited, to illustrate the impossibility of maintaining a free government, unless the majority of a nation shall continu-