In their
nomination to office, they will not appoint to the exercise of
authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function, not
according to their sordid, selfish interest, nor to their wanton
caprice, nor to their arbitrary will, but they will confer that
power (which any man may well tremble to give or to receive) on
those only in whom they may discern that predominant proportion of
active virtue and wisdom, taken together and fitted to the charge,
such as in the great and inevitable mixed mass of human
imperfections and infirmities is to be found.
When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be acceptable,
either in the act or the permission, to him whose essence is good,
they will be better able to extirpate out of the minds of all
magistrates, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, anything that bears
the least resemblance to a proud and lawless domination.
But one of the first and most leading principles on which the
commonwealth and the laws are consecrated is, lest the temporary
possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have
received from their ancestors or of what is due to their posterity,
should act as if they were the entire masters, that they should not
think it among their rights to cut off the entail or commit waste on
the inheritance by destroying at their pleasure the whole original
fabric of their society, hazarding to leave to those who come after
them a ruin instead of an habitation- and teaching these successors as
little to respect their contrivances as they had themselves
respected the institutions of their forefathers.
Pages:
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153