rendered miserable, by such evil moral qualities, the best
agents for rendering a nation virtuous and happy? Is the
school of dissimulation, the school of liberty?
The history of England itself, is as fruitful in the effects of a jealousy among orders, as any other example quoted by Mr. Adams. It exhibits a series of efforts on the part of the nobles, to become independent of the crown; on the part of the crown, to become despotick; and on the part of the commons, to subdue the king and nobility. And we see that gallant nation, after toiling for centuries in the cause of liberty, take refuge from a system, founded in a jealousy of orders, to one, founded in the corruption of its representatives. The most perfect experiment, hitherto made, (as Mr. Adams believes) of balanced orders, is deserted for a system of force and fraud, as an amelioration of its malignity. And the issue of the system of orders in this celebrated experiment, simply is, that whilst these orders are guided by jealousy, the nation is distracted, and when united by paper and patronage, it is plundered.
The constant termination of the system of orders elsewhere, and its catastrophe in England, proves that a balance of power among them, is an unnatural speculation; it is invariably disordered by a tendency towards some one simple principle of government. The question with the United States, was, whether they would try the mixed system of orders, and be conducted by this medium to one of these simple forms; or whether, instead of committing their fate to accident, they should plant it in good moral principles.
They saw that the mixtures of orders, without any exception, after suffering the most agonizing throes, had brought forth monarchy, the ancient aristocracy, ochlocracy, or the modern aristocracy of paper and patronage; and that it had in no instance produced national self government. They preferred that simple principle, which the system of orders has never produced. And our computation
