It may fall upon the house of representatives to elect
a president, and each candidate may promise, and if he is
elected, bestow an office upon every elector. The same effects will follow, as if the parliament was to elect a king.
Executive patronage, in the real and supposed case, constitutes the utmost temptation to be treacherous to a nation,
exactly where the publick good requires the utmost integrity. It is impossible to contrive a better scheme than
this for exciting the virulence of faction, by the goadings of
ambition, avarice, self interest, and all the most violent passions; or to take a better chance for producing a civil war.
Since oracles were exploded, no mode has been discovered for deceiving and oppressing nations, equally treacherous and successful with that of corrupting their representatives. Confidence, inspired by religion in the first case, and
by election in the second, is the mantle for fraud in both. The influence of one man over a nation, fraudulently or
forcibly exercised, is the essential principle of monarchy; as a monopoly of wealth by an exclusive interest at the publick expense, is of aristocracy. In a former part of this essay, an attempt was made to prove, that a mixture of monarchical and aristocratical ingredients in democratical systems, caused those disorders, ascribed by Mr. Adams to inaccuracy in balancing them ; and that however commixed, their natural enmity would continue to produce pernicious
effects, as in all former experiments. If executive influence over legislative bodies, is a monarchical ingredient: and if a paper system is an aristocratical ingredient; all the horrours of a warfare among orders must ensue, either on Mr. Adams's principles or ours; because, according to him, it cannot be prevented, except by an accurate balance of orders; according to us, it cannot be prevented on account of their natural enmity to each other.
The prospect of victory is on the side of executive power. The code of its political tacticks, lies open in the example of England. That example may accelerate its success, by causing it to be expected. A president, by the
