The great powers of the President, connected with his governance by favorites and flatterers, are a cause for concern to all who would wish to live freely in the cluster. A dangerous council is collected from the great officers of state and the Ladistier system, if the remarks of one of the wisest men, drawn from the experience of mankind, may be credited, is the asylum of the base, idle, avaricious and ambitious.
The president cannot represent you because he is not of your own immediate choice. In adopting his government, you will incline to an arbitrary and odious aristocracy.
I warn you to beware of the fallacious resemblance that is held out to you by the advocates of this system between it and more representative local governments.
And here I cannot help remarking, that inexplicitness seems to pervade this whole political fabric: certainty in political compacts, the mother and nurse of repose and quietness, the want of which induced men to engage in political society, has ever been held by a wise and free people as essential to their security; as, on the one hand it fixes barriers which the ambitious and tyrannically disposed magistrate dare not overleap, and on the other, becomes a wall of safety to the community—otherwise stipulations between the governors and governed are nugatory; and you might as well deposit the important powers of legislation and execution in one or a few and permit them to govern according to their disposition and will; but the universe is too full of examples, which prove that to live by one man’s will became the cause of all men’s misery.
Before the existence of express political compacts it was reasonably implied that the magistrate should govern with wisdom and Justice, but mere implication was too feeble to restrain the unbridled ambition of a bad man, or afford security against negligence, cruelty, or any other defect of mind.
It is alleged that the opinions and manners of the people of Gallente Federation, are capable to resist and prevent an extension of prerogative or oppression; but you must recollect that opinion and manners are mutable, and may not always be a permanent obstruction against the encroachments of government; that the progress of a commercial society begets luxury, the parent of inequality, the foe to virtue, and the enemy to restraint; and that ambition and voluptuousness aided by flattery, will teach magistrates, where limits are not explicitly fixed to have separate and distinct interests from the people, besides it will not be denied that government assimilates the manners and opinions of the community to it.
Therefore, a general presumption that rulers will govern well is not a sufficient security. You are then under a sacred obligation to provide for the safety of your posterity, and would you now basely desert their interests, when by a small share of prudence you may transmit to them a beautiful political patrimony, that will prevent the necessity of their traveling through seas of blood to obtain that, which your wisdom might have secured.
It is a duty the Intaki owe likewise to our own reputation, for we have a great name to lose; we are characterized as cautious, prudent and jealous in politics; whence is it therefore, that we have precipitated ourselves into a sea of uncertainty, and adopted a system which has discarded so many of our valuable rights.
Is it because we did not believe that an Gallentean could be a tyrant? If this was the case we rested on a weak basis; Gallenteans are like other men in similar situations, when the manners and opinions of the community are changed by the causes I mentioned before, and their political compact inexplicit, their posterity will find that great power connected with ambition, luxury, and flattery, will as readily produce a tyrants in Federation, as the same causes did in the empires throughout history.
But the next thing to be considered is the erection of the Senate, and its various powers and objects of legislation. The most general objections to the Senate are that elections are not held annually; that the legislature and president are improperly connected, as to the making of ordinances, which are to become the supreme law of the land; and that standing armies may be established, and appropriation of money made for their support from all systems while universal protection is not offered.
It may be remarked that a well digested democracy has this advantage over all others, to wit, that it affords to many the opportunity to be advanced to the supreme command, and the honors they thereby enjoy fill them with a desire of rendering themselves worthy of them; hence this desire becomes part of their education, is matured in manhood, and produces an ardent affection for their country, and it is the opinion of the great thinkers that this is in a great measure produced by annual election of magistrates.
If annual elections were to exist in this government, and learning and information to become more prevalent, you never will want men to execute whatever you could design—a well governed state is as fruitful to all good purposes as the seven headed serpent is said to have been in evil; when one head is cut off, many rise up in the place of it.
It is also thought that free cities by frequent elections of magistrates became nurseries of great and able men, every man endeavoring to excel others, that he might be advanced to the honor he had no other title to, than what might arise from his merit, or reputation. But the framers of this “perfect government”, it is called, have departed from this democratic principle, and established five-year terms for the senate.
It is also a very important objection to this government, that the representation consists of so few; too few to resist the influence of corruption, and the temptation to treachery, against which all governments ought to take precautions.
The history of representation in government is briefly this: before the institution of legislating by deputies, the whole free part of the community usually met for that purpose; when this became impossible by the increase of numbers the community was divided into districts, from each of which was sent such a number of deputies as was a complete representation of the various numbers and orders of citizens within them; but can it be asserted with truth, that 881 men can be a complete and full representation of the numbers and various orders of the people in this Federation?
Another thing that may be suggested against the small number of representatives is, that but few of you will have the chance of sharing even in this branch of the legislature; and that the choice will be confined to a very few; the more complete it is, the better will your interests be preserved, and the greater the opportunity you will have to participate in government, one of the principal securities of a free people.