This form of government is capable of such an approximation, and resemblance, in its external form, to a representative democracy that the one is frequently mistaken for the other. The discriminating features of a representative democracy, as we have before observed, are the limitation of power; the frequency of elections, by the whole body of the people; the capacity of every citizen of the state to be elected to any public office, to which his talents and integrity may recommend him; and the responsibility of the public agent to the people, for his conduct. If all, or either of these characters be wanting in the constitution of the state, it is an aristocracy, though it should be founded upon the consent of the people, if either of these characters be wanting in the mode of administering the government, it then becomes an aristocracy founded upon fraud and usurpation. Seldom has such a government failed to spring up, from the immediate ruins of monarchy: never, perhaps, has it hitherto failed to undermine and subvert a government founded on the principles of a democracy. There is not in nature a spirit more subtle than aristocracy; nothing more unconfinable; nothing whose operations are more constant, more imperceptible, or more certain of success; nothing less apt to alarm in infancy; nothing more terrible at maturity.
Malum bud non aliud velocius ullum;
Mobilitate yiget, vousque acquirit eundo;
Parva mety primo; mox sese attollit in auras;
Ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubila condit.
VIRGIL
In aristocracies where the whole power is lodged in a senate, or council of men of eminent stations or fortunes, one may sometimes expect sufficient wisdom and political abilities to discern and accomplish whatever the interest of the state may require. But there is no security against factions, seditions, and civil wars; much less can this form secure fidelity to the public interest. The views of a corrupt senate will be the aggrandizing of themselves, their families, and their posterity, by all oppressions of the people. In hereditary senates these evils are certain; and the majority of such bodies may even want a competent share of talents to discharge the duties of their stations. Among men born in high stations of wealth and power, ambition, vanity, insolence, and an unsociable contempt of the lower orders, as if they were not of the same species, or were not fellow-citizens with them, too frequently prevail. And these high stations afford many occasions of corruption, by sloth, luxury, and debauchery, the general fore-runners and attendants of the barest venality. An unmixed hereditary aristocracy, if not the worst, must be among the very worst forms of government, since it engenders every species of evil in a government, without producing any countervailing benefit, or advantage.
In a council of senators elected for life, by the people, or by any popular interest, there is more reason to expect both wisdom and fidelity, than in the case of an hereditary aristocracy: but here the cogent tie of responsibility is wanting; and without that, the ambitious views of enlarging their powers, and their wealth, will supercede all ideas of gratitude, or fidelity to those to whom they owe their elevation.
When new members are admitted into the senatorial order by an election, in which the right of suffrage is confined to such as have already obtained an admission into that order; or where the right of admission into the senate itself is vested in that body; the senate will infallibly become a dangerous cabal, (Without any of the advantages desirable in civil polity,) and attempt to make their office hereditary. When senators are entitled to the privileges of that station in consequence of possessing a certain degree of wealth, the burdens of the state will, without exception, be, thrown upon the poorer classes of the people. Thus aristocracy, whatever foundation it may be raised upon, will always prove a most iniquitous and oppressive form of government.
In absolute monarchies, and in perfect democracies, the seeds of aristocracy are contained in wealth; but they do not germinate so long as these governments remain unmixed: for power is not attached to riches in the former, they being hidden from the sight there, least they should tempt the grasp of the sovereign: in the latter, they minister to domestic luxury, or furnish the means of secret, corruption only. The moment that wealth becomes influential, the principle of democracy is corrupted; when it is allied with power, the democracy itself is subverted; when this alliance becomes hereditary in any state, the democratic principle may be regarded as annihilated.
But the most easy and successful mode in which an aristocracy commences, or advances, consists in the secret and gradual abuse of the confidence of the people, in a representative democracy. Slight, and sometimes even imperceptible, innovations, occasional usurpations, founded upon the pretended emergency of the occasion: or upon former unconstitutional precedents; the introduction of the doctrines of constructive grants of power: of the duty of self-preservation in a government, however constituted, or however limited; of the right of eminent domain, (or in other words, absolute power,) in all governments; these, with the stale pretence of the dangers to be apprehended from the giddy multitude in democratic governments, and a thousand other pretexts and arguments of the same stamp, form the ladder by which the agents of the people mount over the heads of their constituents, and finally ascend to that pinnacle of authority and power, from whence they behold those who have raised them with contempt, and treat them with indignation and insult. The only preventive lies in the vigilance of the people. Where the people are too numerous, or too much dispersed to deliberate upon the conduct of their public agents, or too supine to watch over that conduct, the representative will soon render himself paramount to, and independent of, his constituents; and then the people may bid a long farewell to all their happiness.
The first form of government established at Venice, was founded upon principles perfectly democratic. Magistrates were chosen by a general assembly of the people; and their power continued only for one year. This simple form of government (we are told by Doctor Moore,12 whose inquiries and researches upon this subject afford an useful, and an awful lesson to all democratic states;) remained uncorrupted for one hundred and fifty years. Upwards of three hundred years were afterwards employed in gradual, and almost imperceptible changes in the government, and encroachments upon the rights of the people, before that system of terror, which finally rendered the Venetian government the most tyrannical and formidable to its own citizens that the world has ever known, was completed by the establishment of the state inquisition. From that period the most complete despotism hath with unremitting rigor been exerted not only over the actions, but over the minds, of every citizen of that miserable state. A word, a look, nay silence itself, may be interpreted to be treasonable, in a government whose maxim is, “that it is better that an innocent person should suffer from an ill grounded suspicion, than the government should be endangered by any scrutiny into its conduct.”
Should it be inquired how such important changes can possibly be effected where the supreme power is vested in the people, as in the American States, we may give the answer in the words of De Lolme.13 The combination of those who share either in the actual exercise of the public power, or in its advantages, do not allow themselves to sit down in inaction. They wake, while the people sleep. Entirely taken up with the thoughts of their own power, they live but to increase it. Deeply versed in the management of public business, they see at once all the possible consequences of measures. And, as they have the exclusive direction of the springs of government, they give rise, at pleasure, to every incident that may influence the minds of a multitude who are not on their guard; ever active in turning to their advantage every circumstance that happens, they equally avail themselves of the tractableness of the people during public calamities, and its heedlessness in times of prosperity. By presenting in their speeches arguments and facts, which there is no opportunity of examining, they lead the people into gross, and yet decisive errors. In confirmation of these observations he cites two instances from the history of his own country, which have occurred within the present century; and which may serve to show how slight a movement of the political machine, may effect a total change in its operations. In Geneva in the year 1707 a law was enacted that a general assembly of the people, should be held every five years to treat of the affairs of the republic, but the magistrates who dreaded those assemblies soon obtained from the citizens themselves, the