Woe to that country, too, that, passing into the opposite
extreme, considers a low education, a mean contracted view of
things, a sordid, mercenary occupation as a preferable title to
command. Everything ought to be open, but not indifferently, to
every man. No rotation; no appointment by lot; no mode of election
operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation can be generally good
in a government conversant in extensive objects. Because they have
no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to
the duty or to accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate
to say that the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition,
ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare
merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through
some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an
eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too,
that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.
Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state that
does not represent its ability as well as its property. But as ability
is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish,
inert, and timid, it never can be safe from the invasion of ability
unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the
representation. It must be represented, too, in great masses of
accumulation, or it is not rightly protected.
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