distinguished, continue to be cherished. If this continues to be the
ruling passion of our souls, the weaker feeling of the mistaken
enthusiast will be corrected, the Utopian dreams of the scheming
politician dissipated, and the complicated intrigues of the demagogue
rendered harmless. The spirit of liberty is the sovereign balm for
every injury which our institutions may receive. On the contrary, no
care that can be used in the construction of our Government, no
division of powers, no distribution of checks in its several
departments, will prove effectual to keep us a free people if this
spirit is suffered to decay; and decay it will without constant
nurture. To the neglect of this duty the best historians agree in
attributing the ruin of all the republics with whose existence and fall
their writings have made us acquainted. The same causes will ever
produce the same effects, and as long as the love of power is a
dominant passion of the human bosom, and as long as the understandings
of men can be warped and their affections changed by operations upon
their passions and prejudices, so long will the liberties of a people
depend on their own constant attention to its preservation. The danger
to all well-established free governments arises from the unwillingness
of the people to believe in its existence or from the influence of
designing men diverting their attention from the quarter whence it
approaches to a source from which it can never come. This is the old
trick of those who would usurp the government of their country. In the
name of democracy they speak, warning the people against the influence
of wealth and the danger of aristocracy. History, ancient and modern,
is full of such examples. Caesar became the master of the Roman people
and the senate under the pretense of supporting the democratic claims
of the former against the aristocracy of the latter; Cromwell, in the
character of protector of the liberties of the people, became the
dictator of England, and Bolivar possessed himself of unlimited power