John Taylor of Caroline

“ And why not lash these lashers of man themselves into the path of moral rectitude, by political law. A good huntsman lashes his worst dogs into the right trail. Why should some men shrink from the mild discipline of justice, whilst they prescribe to others the cruel severities of fraud and oppression? Oh! say all parties of interest, with great solemnity, the laws for gratifying our avarice and ambition, are necessary to make other men good, or to keep them in order.
Thus thin is the delusion under which tyranny is concealed from the good, and perpetrated by the bad. ”

“ Can they decide justly without discussion, and without facts, except those admitted by the culprit? Will the ambition and avarice of factions be recited in their own laws? or will these factions enact their frauds into justice, as they do idols into gods? When laws pretend to make gods or truth, we may certainly expect idols and falsehood. Factions will never make truth by law, for the sake of detecting or punishing themselves. The instant a government is guided by avarice or ambition, it degenerates into a faction, which makes laws to punish the opinions of others, and to hide its own crimes. ”

“ A knowledge of principles is as indispensable to a nation, to enable it to sustain a free government, as of plants to a horticulturist. It is as absurd to ingraft aristocratical or monarchical buds upon a republican root, as a brier upon an oak. Those who pretend to this art, design gradually to eradicate the oak, and to plant the brier where it stood. By being able to class principles, we shall easily class laws. Aristocracy, by playing the Harlequin, by Protean transformations, and by its painted draperies, will no longer be able to perplex and deceive mankind. ”

“ Arms can only be controlled by arms. An armed nation only can keep up an army, and also maintain its liberty. The constitution of the United States, overlooking this undeniable truth, has placed both the raising an army, and the arming of the militia, among the potential attributes of the general government; whereas the first belonged to the principle of accumulation, and the latter to the principle of division. One, therefore, is a power, and the other a check upon that power. One is a foe, the other a friend to liberty. One strengthens the government, the other the nation. ”

“ Can unchangeable constitutions, be adapted for a being changeable and corruptible? Would an entire nation, as accomplished as Mr. Adams, require the same form of government as a nation of savages? If the moral nature of man is inconstant, how is this inconstancy to be controlled or nourished, in order to preserve a free government, except by new political law? It is unavoidable. The only question is, whether it shall be enacted openly by conventions, or covertly by governments. ”

“ In such a legal policy is lodged the kernel of every civilized tyranny, however the shells may be diversified. If a nation is wise enough to chace this single political demon out of its statute book, it can hardly lose its liberty; if it is so weak, as to surrender that book to the fiend, it cannot keep it. By leaving property to be divided by industry, the avarice of the majority is engaged on the side of a free government; by legal divisions of it, the avarice of a minority is bribed to destroy one. Nature, cries one philosopher, produces equality ”

“ Caligula's appointment of his horse to the consulship, is both an illustration and a mockery of the idea of national sovereignty, without the freedom of utterance; and a nation, the members of which can only speak, and write as government pleases, is exactly this consular sovereign.
But although the rights of the horse and the nation may be equal, their happiness will be unequal. The thoughts of the horse being under no legal control, he retains this natural source of pleasure. Man's thoughts, suffered to flow, furnish the purest streams of human happiness. ”

“ Alas! is it true, that ages are necessary to understand, whilst a moment will suffice to invent, an imposture? Is it true, that the example of their venerable ancestor, groaning for a century under the oppressions of this modern system of aristocracy, is incapable of awakening the Americans; and that they themselves must also become a beacon for the benefit of a more enlightened era? Cæsar profited by the failure of Marius, in the art of enslaving his country; will no nation ever profit by the failure of another in the art of preserving its liberty? ”

“ Is it virtue which enables one nation to conquer another, or a treacherous faction to enslave their own country? Virtue could not protect the Roman Senators against the swords of the Gauls, and vice can see that eleven men can control the tyranny of one. If minorities often make themselves tyrants by wisdom, why may not nations preserve their liberty by it? Why do all minor societies find wisdom and republican principles, the best securities against their own vices, if they are no check upon national vices? Why are conventions useful to them, and pernicious to nations? ”

“ The effort of the general constitution, to say the least, is greater to secure the independence of executive, than of legislative or judicial power; neither of these can appoint a president or enrich him by office. Neither, nor both, can select a president of political opinions similar to their own, or mould his tenets by patronage into such conformity. Was it believed, that numerous bodies would be more likely to corrupt one man, than one man would be to corrupt numerous bodies? Or was it believed, that a single executive was a safer depositary of self government, than a legislative assembly? ”

“ Life is not without its evils, though spent in the lap of a genuine republican government; but morbid ideas of imaginary perfection, or the disposition of ignorance to encounter unknown evils to escape from present inconveniences, too often draw us out of limited happiness into unlimited tyranny. If we should exchange a bed of down for a bed of thorns, because we sometimes rested badly, we should resemble the nations who have preferred a distribution of property by the will of a government, to its genuine republican distribution by industry, talents and labour. ”

“ In destroying the evil principle, inordinate power, it has destroyed a cause of more vice, than human nature has ever perpetrated from any other cause. Having cut off the most copious source of vice, by disabling a government from committing more iniquity than it can prevent, it finds no difficulty in curbing the petty class of municipal offences. It has not been induced by the fact, that one individual will sometimes injure another, to establish the cause of all those dreadful atrocities, which sweep away the liberty, the property, the virtue and the existence of nations. ”

“ To me this government seems to consist of a confederation of parties of interest, excluding the majority of the nation. Such as the church of England, the paper stock party, the East India company, the military party, the pensioned and sinecure party, and the ins and outs, once called whigs and tories; each struggling for self interest and self government, but all, creeping forth like caterpillars from the legal nests in which they have been hatched, to feed upon the fruits of the nation. ”

“ Aid if by the experience of America, the fact appears, that an equality of civil rights, produces moderate government, or any other national benefit, we assign this moral being to the good class. Having discovered by their phenomena the classes to which these beings belong, we conclude, that no human ingenuity can change the class or the nature of any individual, any more than it could change the nature of a physical being. And that it is as obviously erroneous to assert, that hereditary order, or exclusive privilege, will bless mankind, as that water will burn them. ”

“ Is it good policy to bribe a minority into a profession of this virtue, by suffering it to pillage a majority? Is good order secured by rendering the mass of a nation discontented, to content a few? Let us inquire whether such a policy is wise. No one will assert that it is just.
The love of property is now the second basis of civil government. The question is, how a wise statesman should avail himself of this passion. If he forcibly or fraudulently takes wealth from a multitude, and gives it to a few, these few, it is confessed, will support all his projects, bad or good ”

“ Shall any one hesitate then to prefer such a government to all others? A constitution in which the people reserve to themselves the absolute control of their purses, one essential branch of the legislature, and the inquest of grievances and state crimes, will always produce patriotism, bravery, simplicity and science; and that infinitely better for the order, security, and tranquillity they will enjoy, by putting the executive power in one hand, which it becomes their interest, as well as that of the nobles, to watch and control. ”

“ Would he have advised the United States, after recapitulating the human miseries begotten by a jealousy of orders, in every instance of their existence, to surrender their peace and happiness, merely to try whether this evil principle, from which horrours innumerable have proceeded, might be made to produce good? No, he would have demonstrated, that no politician, no theorist, no moral alchymist, has skill able to change the nature of good and evil, and to reverse the moral laws of the Deity. ”

“ No item of the expense of war is more transferable from the living to the unborn, than the blood it sheds. Money buys this blood and every other expense of war; but it is neither blood nor bread, and only a collector of them. These realities, not the signs or tokens, supply the war; and after they are expended, their shadows are made by anticipation, to consume the same amount of realities which the war devoured, even that of human life, if death by oppression is equivalent to death by the sword. ”

“ Small dividends are not as liable to ambition and avarice, as great dividends. Self interest can only be controlled by keeping out of its hands the arms with which it has universally enslaved the general interest. But it universally gets these arms by persuading mankind, that the danger is imaginary, and the remedy useless; and hierarchy, feudality, hereditary orders, mercenary armies, funding and banking, have successively inflicted upon them, the expiations of an opinion so absurd. ”

“ Nations have for three thousand years been doomed to oppression, by an opinion that they had not capacity to govern themselves: are they doomed to suffer it for another three thousand years, from an opinion that they are unable to give themselves a paper currency, if it should be useful?. In the first ease, the nation is persuaded that it is a fool, but that a few individuals are wise; in the second, that it is a pauper, but that a few individuals are rich. The last idea, is even ludicrous, as the sole object of banking is to tax a rich nation to enrich poor individuals. ”

“ If legislative patronage enriches a portion of society, that portion is necessarily converted into an order, possessing the qualities of an aristocracy. It is placed between the government and the nation. It receives wealth from the one, and takes it from the other. This ties it to the government by the passion of avarice, and separates it from the nation by the passion of fear. And these two passions, annexed to any separate interest, have unexceptionably converted it into a political order, and forced it into the ranks of despotism. ”

“ Shall we corrupt the legislature, to come at rare talents which do not exist, and which would, if found, he a calamity; or he contented with such talents as nature does create, and with legislative integrity in the bargain? If such men as Alexander, Cæsar or Cromwell are examples of this vast superiority of talents, it would he better to let them remain unknown, than to awaken them by executive patronage over legislative power.
The truth is. that rare talents, like a natural aristocracy, are created by ignorance, and that cunning takes advantage of the opinion to scourge mankind. ”

“ Among these, the rights of bearing arms, of religion, and of discussion, constitute of themselves a measureless superiority in our policy, over any other, unable, by reason of different principles, to place them beyond the reach of government; as we shall presently endeavour to prove.
If a nation surrenders all its rights to a government, it cannot be free. Freedom consists in having rights, beyond the reach and independent of the will of another; slavery, in having none. The form of the master, or his having three heads or one head, does not create the slave. ”

“ Not that soldiers are more cruel, avaricious or tyrannical than priests, stockjobbers or nobles, for the contrary is the fact; but because a military is a separate interest, subsisting on the nation. The militia being nearly the nation itself, is the solitary appendage of civil power by which this principle of our policy can be en forced. If it is rendered incompetent to this end, election, a mere moral power, has no remaining ally able to save it, and hence almost every composition, constituting the code of our policy, has asserted the indispensible necessity of a well regulated militia. ”

“ The makers and managers of aristocracy, gamble with a certainty of winning, for a stake extorted and increased by themselves. If they deposit their penny, they draw a pound, and augment their power. The system of paper and patronage, freights annual gallions for a government and a faction, at a national mine called industry; and bestows on the people such blessings, as those enjoy who dig up the ores of Peru and Mexico. The receivers of the profit drawn from this mine, reap wealth and power ; the earners reap armies, wars, taxes, monopolies, faction, poverty and ten hundred millions of debt. ”

“ Besides, funding never fights for a nation in imminent danger; its wars are guided by other calculations, than those of publick safety; and the moment of peril is the moment of its flight.
If posterity could pass a law, for imposing heavy taxes on the present generation, the entire universe of existing progenitors would exclaim, " if you can rob us of property, we can rob you of life. It is better that you should never exist, than that we who do exist, should be the prey of your avarice; than that a series of generations should be sacrificed to one unborn and unsympathising." ”

“ It has been our policy, so to divide power, and diminish the excitements of avarice and ambition, as to wring out of its soul the poisons arising from the evil qualities of monopoly; laws to foster these qualities, labour to revive what that policy labours to destroy.
If monopoly is made up of good and evil qualities; and if our policy has planted our government in its good qualities, a revolution is effected by transplanting it into its evil qualities. The constitutional corporation is endeavoured to be cleansed of avarice and ambition, the scourges of mankind ”

“ Do you not see hierarchy or faction, ambition or avarice, superstition or tyranny, invariably pronouncing sentence? A trial of opinion can never be fair or just. Whoever is of my opinion, acquits, of an adverse, condemns me. Where nature disables us from judging impartially, it forbids us to judge at all. The right of A to condemn B, is no better than the right of B to condemn A; and a clashing right cannot be a right in either. Monareby, aristocracy, democracy, and sects, religious and political, judge of each other's opinions, as the Pope judged Calvin ”

“ Republicanism, like a mercantile company, perished, whenever one man by any means whatever has obtained the direction of the common interest. It is not her motto that "safety lies in the counsel of one man."
The people of the United States and of Great Britain, have been frequently censured for a corrupt or absurd exercise of the right of suffrage; and their want of virtue or understanding in the discharge of this function, has been forcibly urged against the right itself. An accumulation of power in the hands of one man, bears a strong similitude to its accumulation in a single chamber. ”

“ Will a privileged order, once invested with power, follow the example of election and representation, by becoming a felo de se? The national repentance which succeeds the establishment of orders or monopolies, gains only derision, and an aggravation of the evil; none of the instruments of oppression are ever relinquished without civil war; and should they be introduced into the United States, we may certainly pronounce, that no other politician will have an opportunity of again congratulating this country on the discovery of conventions, until he has seen it drenched in blood. ”

“ Whenever the mass of wealth, virtue and talents, is lost by a few and transferred to a great portion of a nation, an aristocracy no longer retains the only sanctions of its claim and wherever these sanctions deposit themselves, they carry the interwoven power. By spreading themselves so generally throughout a nation, as to be no longer compressible into a legislative chamber, or inheritable by the aid of perpetuity and superstition, these antient sanctions of aristocracy, become the modern sanctions of public opinion. ”