the respective members, and would beget a full compliance with all
the constitutional requisitions of the Union. This language, at the
present day, would appear as wild as a great part of what we now
hear from the same quarter will be thought, when we shall have
received further lessons from that best oracle of wisdom, experience.
It at all times betrayed an ignorance of the true springs by which
human conduct is actuated, and belied the original inducements to
the establishment of civil power. Why has government been
instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to
the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. Has it been
found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater
disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been
inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and
the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation
has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to
be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one.
A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the
deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of
whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which
they would blush in a private capacity.
In addition to all this, there is, in the nature of sovereign
power, an impatience of control, that disposes those who are
invested with the exercise of it, to look with an evil eye upon all
external attempts to restrain or direct its operations. From this
spirit it happens, that in every political association which is
formed upon the principle of uniting in a common interest a number
of lesser sovereignties, there will be found a kind of eccentric
tendency in the subordinate or inferior orbs, by the operation of
which there will be a perpetual effort in each to fly off from the
common centre. This tendency is not difficult to be accounted for.