every office elective, as contradistinguished from the hereditary tenures prevailing in monarchial and aristocratic forms of government; and also, that while they provide amply for the protection of personal liberty, and the property of individuals, which is, indeed, the only sure foundation of all good government, they do not sufficiently attend to promoting the two other great requisites of good government; namely, putting a strong and permanent disposeable force into the hands of the executive; and developing the national mind on a great scale, by instituting and encouraging large and liberal systems of general instruction. In most other countries, the government is all, and the people nothing; in the United States, the people are all, and the government nothing. The same general principle applies to all paper constitutions, which applies to all statute law; namely, that so perpetual is the fluctuation of human affairs, so various the modifications of which property is susceptible, so boundless the diversity of relations, which may arise in civil life, so infinite the possible combinations of events and circumstances, that they elude the power of enumeration, and mock all the efforts of human foresight. Whence, it is the duty of every wise and good government to abstain from too great a rage for multiplying statutes, and from too much minuteness in specifying the particular powers of the municipal departments. It is best, under the responsibility of impeachment for mal-conduct, to leave to the powers of government, more especially the executive, a sufficiently undefined latitude of authority, to enable them to adapt the necessary national measures to those exigencies which are continually arising; but which no paper constitution can possibly provide for, or foresee. Having gone through a summary of the provisions of the United States Constitution, it is proposed now, to offer some general observations on the radical, the intrinsic weakness of the Federal government; the necessity of gradually strengthening it, more especially in its executive branch; and, above all, the necessity of a vigorous administration of the general government upon Federal principles, that is to say, the principles on which the Constitution itself was founded and constructed. This was done by General Washington, throughout the whole course of his administration; and Mr. Adams appeared to begin his presidential career in the same track; but, towards its close, his policy assumed an aspect peculiarly strange and wayward, visionary and fantastic, turbulent and unsettled. Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison avowedly administered the general government altogether upon the democratic scheme, and set themselves stoutly to the task of undoing all that Washington had done; namely, disbanding the regular army, destroying the national navy, annihilating the internal revenue, ruining the commerce of the country, breaking up the Bank of the United States, and many other philosophical improvements in the art of misgoverning the commonwealth. Those who profess to be the intimate friends of Mr. Monroe, and to be acquainted with his sentiments, are labouring strenuously to cause the American people to believe that our new President intends to follow the good old Federal plan of General Washington, and watch over the finances, encourage the commerce, nourish the navy, protect the army, cherish the liberty, prosperity, strength, and happiness of the nation at home, and secure its respect and influence abroad; that the miserable party distinctions of Federalist and Democrat are to be for ever abolished, and a political millennium to be established throughout the Union. It is the more to be lamented, that the Federal government should have been ever administered on democratic principles, because it is, in its essential conformation, too weak at once to balance the weight of the separate State sovereignties, to maintain its own steady dominion over all the portions of its immense Union, and to build up the nation at large, by certain steps, into a paramount power, influencing and controlling the greater potentates of the elder quarters of the globe. The great statesmen (led by Washington himself, and illumined by the transcendent genius of Hamilton) who framed the Federal Constitution, earnestly deprecated : the notion of its being considered or conducted as a democracy. And many very elaborate and able arguments, founded on a careful induction from facts recorded in history, and resting on the basis of the most approved principles of political philosophy, were adduced to prove that the general government of the United States is not a democracy, but that care had been taken by the General Convention, which met at Philadelphia, in the year 1787, to infuse, as much as existing circumstances would allow, of the wisdom and energy of aristocracy, to temper and restrain the turbulence, the fluctuation, and the weakness of unbalanced democracy, which they emphatically declared to be the greatest misfortune that could be inflicted on any country. These illustrious sages and practical politicians knew full well, that an uncontrolled democracy had destroyed Athens, and Carthage, and Rome, and the Italian republics of the middle ages, and the United Provinces of Holland. To which melancholy muster-roll of perdition may now be added the dominion of revolutionary France. They, therefore, feared that the prevalence of an unchecked democracy throughout the United States would consign to destruction the liberties, the wealth, the honour, the character, the happiness, the religion, the morals, the whole august fabric of public prosperity and private worth, which have, at some auspicious periods of their history, so peculiarly distinguished the national career of the confederated States of America. It is the bounden duty of the people of every free country, to watch over and preserve their own liberties, by keeping the declarations and measures of their rulers within the bounds of delegated dominion, prescribed by the letter and the spirit of the national Constitution. And it is equally the duty of the government of every free country to guard against all encroachments upon the liberties of the people; to encourage the equal and impartial administration of justice; to promote the best interests of learning; to foster the arts and sciences; to quicken the activity of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, and every species of productive industry and skill; to reverence and aid the progress of pure religion and sound morals, in all the various denominations of religious belief, and throughout all the classes of the community; in a word, to labour unremittingly to render the people prosperous and happy at home, respected, feared, and courted abroad. In order to accomplish these great purposes, it is one, among many, of the indispensable duties of the government to exclude all foreigners from any political interference or influence in the affairs of the nation. They should be protected equally with the natives in all the pursuits of private industry and enterprise, but should never be permitted to lay their unhallowed hands upon the ark of the national government; to invade the recesses of the executive cabinet; to violate the sanctity of the temple of legislation, or to pollute the ermine of justice in the tribunals of the country. All men, unless they are unsound at the heart's core, cling with fond attachment to the land that gave them birth, to its hills, and dales, and woods; to its people, government, and laws; to all the associations, physical and moral, that exercise the strongest dominion over the human mind. All such associations, prejudices, and predilections every honest foreigner necessarily carries with him into American office; into the service of a country, whose social institutions, taken altogether, have no parallel in the history of the world. If a foreigner does not love his own native country, does not desire her well-being and prosperity, what kind of heart has he? Can a traitor at home be faithful abroad? Can one, who aims the assassin's knife at the vitals of his own parent country, be fitted to uphold the great national interests of a stranger land? Are unnatural hatred, dastardly revenge, and cannibal malignity to be mistaken for lofty patriotism, comprehensive wisdom, and unblenched integrity? It is indeed mere madness and political suicide, in any and in every country to suffer foreigners to have a political vote; to permit them to elect or be elected to any office in the State, from that of the chief executive of 1 the whole nation down to the lowest ministerial officer in the obscurest hamlet of an obscure district. It is quite enough that a foreigner be protected in his person, his property, his reputation, his individual efforts in his calling, by the equal administration of justice dealt out to him in common with all the other inhabitants of the community. But every country ought to be exclusively governed by its own native talent and property. In every nation that arrogates to itself the proud prerogative of being an independent substantive power, its own native warriors should lead their armies; its own native heroes should bear their naval thunders over every sea; its own native statesmen should guide the councils, regulate the finances, administer the government of their country; its own native judges should dispense the streams of law, justice, and equity throughout all the land; that the people, growing up under the shelter of the talent, property, and character of their natural guardians, may, through a long series of years, advance in prosperity, intelligence, wealth, and power, until they become the bulwark and ornament of a surrounding world. Let America, in the day of her exaltation, remember the advice of Rome's best poet : "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; General Washington administered the government of the United States with a practical efficiency and wisdom, peculiarly calculated to render the country prosperous at home, and respected abroad. Owing to various untoward causes, the chief of which, however, was the entire inefficacy of the old Confederation of the States, this country was in the most deplorable condition when President Washington first took upon himself the administration of the Federal government, in the year 1789. The whole nation stood upon the verge of dissolution; all the national movements at home were full of disorder and confusion, and abroad full of |