Arbitrary power is to the mind what alcohol is to the body; it intoxicates.  Man loves power.  It is perhaps the strongest human passion; and the more absolute the power, the stronger the desire for it; and the more it is desired, the more its exercise is enjoyed:  this enjoyment is to human nature a fearful temptation,—­generally an overmatch for it.  Hence it is true, with hardly an exception, that arbitrary power is abused in proportion as it is desired.  The fact that a person intensely desires power over others, without restraint, shows the absolute necessity of restraint.  What woman would marry a man who made it a condition that he should have the power to divorce her whenever he pleased?  Oh! he might never wish to exercise it, but the power he would have!  No woman, not stark mad, would trust her happiness in such hands.

Would a father apprentice his son to a master, who insisted that his power over the lad should be absolute?  The master might perhaps, never wish to commit a battery upon the boy, but if he should, he insists upon having full swing!  He who would leave his son in the, clutches of such a wretch, would be bled and blistered for a lunatic as soon as his friends could get their hands upon him.

The possession of power, even when greatly restrained, is such a fiery stimulant, that its lodgement in human hands is always perilous.  Give men the handling of immense sums of money, and all the eyes of Argus and the hands of Briarcus can hardly prevent embezzlement.

The mutual and ceaseless accusations of the two great political parties in this country, show the universal belief that this tendency of human nature to abuse power, is so strong, that even the most powerful legal restraints are insufficient for its safe custody.  From congress and state legislatures down to grog-shop caucuses and street wranglings, each party keeps up an incessant din about abuses of power.  Hardly an officer, either of the general or state governments, from the President down to the ten thousand postmasters, and from governors to the fifty thousand constables, escapes the charge of ‘abuse of power.’  ‘Oppression,’ ‘Extortion,’ ‘Venality,’ ‘Bribery,’ ‘Corruption,’ ‘Perjury,’ ‘Misrule,’ ‘Spoils,’ ‘Defalcation,’ stand on every newspaper.  Now without any estimate of the lies told in these mutual charges, there is truth enough to make each party ready to believe of the other, and of their best men too, any abuse of power, however monstrous.  As is the State, so is the Church.  From General Conferences to circuit preachers; and from General Assemblies to church sessions, abuses of power spring up as weeds from the dunghill.

All legal restraints are framed upon the presumption, that men will abuse their power if not hemmed in by them.  This lies at the bottom of all those checks and balances contrived for keeping governments upon their centres.  If there is among human convictions one that is invariable and universal, it is, that when men possess unrestrained power over others, over their time, choice, conscience, persons, votes, or means of subsistence, they are under great temptations to abuse it; and that the intensity with which such power is desired, generally measures the certainty and the degree of its abuse.