Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
And yet, however just these sentiments will be allowed to be, we have
already sufficient indications that it will happen in this as in all
former cases of great national discussion. A torrent of angry and
malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the
opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually
hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the
number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the
bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and
efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a
temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty.
An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people,
which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be
represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for
popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on
the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that
the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of
narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally
forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of
liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed
judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous
ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the
rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for
the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that
the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction
of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned
the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career
by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and
ending tyrants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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