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.
Pages:
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140