rapine and vengeance the spark of mercy in the heart; or, if it should be found to glow there, quench it in that heart's blood; make your people scoff at their morals, and unlearn an education to virtue; displace the Christian Sabbath by a profane one, for a respite once in ten days from the toils of murder, because men, who first shed blood for revenge, and proceed to spill it for plunder, and in the progress of their ferocity, for sport, want a festival,—what sort of society would you have? Would not rage grow with its indulgence? The coward fury of a mob rises in proportion as there is less resistance: and their inextinguishable thirst for slaughter grows more ardent as more blood is shed to slake it. In such a state is liberty to be gained or guarded from violation? It could not be kept an hour from the daggers of those, who, having seized despotic power, would claim it as their lawful prize. I have written the history of France. Can we look back upon it without terror, or forward without despair?

The nature of arbitrary power is always odious ; but it cannot be long the arbitrary power of the multitude. There is, probably, no form of rule among mankind, in which the progress of the government depends so little on the particular character of those who administer it. Democracy is the creature of impulse and violence; and the intermediate stages towards the tyranny of one are so quickly passed, that the vileness and cruelty of men are displayed with surprising uniformity. There is not time for great talents to act. There is no sufficient reason to believe, that we should conduct a revolution with much more mildness than the French. If a revo

lution find the citizens lambs, it will soon make them carnivorous, if not cannibals. There is no governing power in the state but party. The moderate and thinking part of the citizens are without power or influence; and it must be so, because all power and influence are engrossed by a factious combination of men, who can overwhelm uncombined individuals with numbers, and the wise and virtuous with clamour and fury.

It is indeed a law of politics as well as of physics, that a body in action must overcome an equal body at rest. The attacks that have been made on the constitutional barriers proclaim, in a tone that would not be louder from a trumpet, that party will not tolerate any resistance to its will. All the supposed independent orders of the commonwealth must be its servile instruments, or its victims. We should experience the same despotism here, but the battle is not yet won. It will be won; and they who already display the temper of their Jacobin progenitors, will not linger or reluct in imitating the worst extremes of their example.

What, then, is to be our condition, if democracy should become dominant?

Faction will inevitably triumph. Where the government is both stable and free, there may be parties. There will be differences of opinion, and the pride of opinion will be sufficient to generate contests, and to inflame them with bitterness and rancour. There will be rivalships among those whom genius, fame, or station have made great, and these will deeply agitate the state without often hazarding its safety. Such parties will excite alarm, but they may be safely left,

like the elements, to exhaust their fury upon each other.

The object of their strife is to get power under the government; for, where that is constituted as it should be, the power over the government will not seem attainable, and, of course, will not be attempted.

But in democratic states there will be factions. The sovereign power being nominally in the hands of all, will be effective within the grasp of a FEW; and, therefore, by the very laws of our nature, a few will combine, intrigue, lie, and fight, to engross it to themselves. All history bears testimony, that this attempt has never yet been disappointed.

Who will be the associates? Certainly not the virtuous, who do not wish to control the society, but quietly to enjoy its protection. The enterprising merchant, the thriving tradesman, the careful farmer, will be engrossed by the toils of their business, and will have little time or inclination for the unprofitable and disquieting pursuits of politics. It is not the industrious, sober husbandman, who will plough that barren field; it is the lazy and dissolute bankrupt, who has no other to plough. The idle, the ambitious, and the needy, will band together to break the hold that law has upon them, and then to get hold of law. Faction is a Hercules, whose first labour is to strangle this lion, and then to make armour of his skin. In every democratic state, the popular faction will have law to keep down its enemies; but it will arrogate to itself an undisputed power over law. Is it not absurd to suppose, that the conquerors will be contented with half the fruits of victory?

We are to be subject, then, if we once reach demo

cracy, to a despotic faction, irritated by the resistance that has delayed, and the scorn that pursues their triumph, elate with the insolence of an arbitrary and uncontrollable domination, and who will exercise their sway, not according to the rules of integrity or national policy, but in conformity with their own exclusive interests and passions.

This is a state of things, which admits of progress, but not of reformation: it is the beginning of a revolution, which must advance. Our affairs, as first observed, no longer depend on counsel. The opinion of a majority is no longer invited or permitted to control our destinies, or even to retard their consummation. The demagogues of the day may, and, no doubt, will give place to some other faction, who will succeed, because they are abler men, or, possibly, in candour we say it, because they are worse. Intrigue will for some time answer instead of force, or the mob will supply it.

As

While the passions of the multitude can be conciliated to confer power and to overcome all impediments to its action, our rulers have a plain and easy task to perform. It costs them nothing but hypocrisy. soon, however, as rival favourites of the people may happen to contend by the practice of the same arts, we are to look for the sanguinary strife of ambition. Brissot will fall by the hand of Danton, and he will be supplanted by Robespierre. The revolution will proceed in exactly the same way, but not with so rapid a pace, as that of France. The vis major will prevail, and some bold chieftain will conquer liberty and reign in her stead.

CHAPTER II.

EQUALITY*.

THERE are some popular maxims, which are scarcely credited as true, and yet are cherished as precious, and defended as even sacred. Most of the democratic articles of faith are blended with truth, and seem to be true; and they so comfortably soothe the pride and envy of the heart, that it swells with resentment when they are contested, and suffers some spasms of apprehension, even when they are examined.

Mr. Thomas Paine's writings abound with this sort of specious falsehoods and perverted truths. Of all his doctrines, none, perhaps, has created more agitation and alarm, than that which proclaims to all men that they are free and equal. This creed is older than its supposed author, and was threadbare in America, before Mr. Paine ever saw our shores; yet it had the effect, in other parts of the world, of novelty. It was news, that the French Revolution scattered through the world. It made the spirit of restlessness and innovation universal. Those who could not be ruled by reason, resolved that they would not be restrained by power. Those who had been governed by law, hungered and thirsted to enjoy, or rather to exercise, the new prerogatives of a democratic majority, which, of right, could establish, and, for any cause or no cause at all, could change. They believed that by making their own and other men's passions sovereign, they

*Written in 1801.

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