Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
In order, perhaps, to give countenance to the objection at any rate, it
may be asked, is there not danger of an opposite bias in the national
government, which may dispose it to endeavor to secure a monopoly of
the federal administration to the landed class? As there is little
likelihood that the supposition of such a bias will have any terrors
for those who would be immediately injured by it, a labored answer to
this question will be dispensed with. It will be sufficient to remark,
first, that for the reasons elsewhere assigned, it is less likely that
any decided partiality should prevail in the councils of the Union than
in those of any of its members. Secondly, that there would be no
temptation to violate the Constitution in favor of the landed class,
because that class would, in the natural course of things, enjoy as
great a preponderancy as itself could desire. And thirdly, that men
accustomed to investigate the sources of public prosperity upon a large
scale, must be too well convinced of the utility of commerce, to be
inclined to inflict upon it so deep a wound as would result from the
entire exclusion of those who would best understand its interest from a
share in the management of them. The importance of commerce, in the
view of revenue alone, must effectually guard it against the enmity of
a body which would be continually importuned in its favor, by the
urgent calls of public necessity.
I the rather consult brevity in discussing the probability of a
preference founded upon a discrimination between the different kinds of
industry and property, because, as far as I understand the meaning of
the objectors, they contemplate a discrimination of another kind. They
appear to have in view, as the objects of the preference with which
they endeavor to alarm us, those whom they designate by the description
of “the wealthy and the well-born.” These, it seems, are to be exalted
to an odious pre-eminence over the rest of their fellow-citizens. At
one time, however, their elevation is to be a necessary consequence of
the smallness of the representative body; at another time it is to be
effected by depriving the people at large of the opportunity of
exercising their right of suffrage in the choice of that body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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