Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the
society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of
the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests
necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority
be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be
insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil:
the one by creating a will in the community independent of the
majority--that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in
the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an
unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not
impracticable. The first method prevails in all governments possessing
an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a
precarious security; because a power independent of the society may as
well espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests
of the minor party, and may possibly be turned against both parties. The
second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United
States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent
on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts,
interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or
of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations
of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must
be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in
the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of
sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of
interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent
of country and number of people comprehended under the same government.
This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal
system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican
government, since it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of
the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States
oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best
security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class
of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and
independence of some member of the government, the only other security,
must be proportionately increased. Justice is the end of government. It
is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued
until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a
society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite
and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a
state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the
violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger
individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to
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