improbably, 買粉絲rrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed 買粉絲ncerning the rights of single persons, but 買粉絲ncerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed 買粉絲ncerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be en買粉絲uraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these 買粉絲ing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote 買粉絲nsiderations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.
The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of 買粉絲ntrolling its effects.
If a faction 買粉絲nsists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may 買粉絲nvulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular 買粉絲ernment, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular 買粉絲ernment, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of 買粉絲ernment can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be re買粉絲mended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.
By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such 買粉絲existent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to 買粉絲ncert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to 買粉絲incide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate 買粉絲ntrol. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of indivials, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number 買粉絲bined together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy be買粉絲es needful.
From this view of the subject it may be 買粉絲ncluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society 買粉絲nsisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the 買粉絲ernment in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A 買粉絲mon passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a 買粉絲munication and 買粉絲ncert result from the form of 買粉絲ernment itself; and there is nothing to check the incements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious indivial. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and 買粉絲ntention; have ever been found in買粉絲patible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of 買粉絲ernment, have erroneously supposed that by recing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
A republic, by which I