Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions. |
The American doctrinaire is the converse of the American demagogue, and, in this way, is scarcely less injurious to the public. The first deals in poetry, the last in cant. He is as much a visionary on one side, as the extreme theoretical democrat is a visionary on the other. |
The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms. |
The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority. |
The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society. |
They who have reasoned ignorantly, or who have aimed at effecting their personal ends by flattering the popular feeling, have boldly affirmed that 'one man is as good as another;' a maxim that is true in neither nature, revealed morals, nor political theory. |
Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion. |