to be perverted from its purposes, and every valuable interest of the country to fall into ruin and decay, without possibility of fixing any single act on which a criminal prosecution can be justly grounded.  The due arrangement of men in the active part of the state, far from being foreign to the purposes of a wise government, ought to be among its very first and dearest objects.  When, therefore, the abettors of the new system tell us, that between them and their opposers there is nothing but a struggle for power, and that therefore we are no ways concerned in it; we must tell those who have the impudence to insult us in this manner, that, of all things, we ought to be the most concerned who, and what sort of men they are that hold the trust of everything that is dear to us.  Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what must either render us totally desperate, or soothe us into the security of idiots.  We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous.  We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt.  Men are in public life as in private, some good, some evil.  The elevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the first objects of all true policy.  But that form of government, which, neither in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has contrived to throw its affairs into the most trustworthy hands, but has left its whole executory system to be disposed of agreeably to the uncontrolled pleasure of any one man, however excellent or virtuous, is a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but consequentially erroneous in every part of it.

In arbitrary governments, the constitution of the ministry follows the constitution of the legislature.  Both the law and the magistrate are the creatures of will.  It must be so.  Nothing, indeed, will appear more certain, on any tolerable consideration of this matter, than that every sort of government ought to have its administration correspondent to its legislature.  If it should be otherwise, things must fall into an hideous disorder.  The people of a free commonwealth, who have taken such care that their laws should be the result of general consent, cannot be so senseless as to suffer their executory system to be composed of persons on whom they have no dependence, and whom no proofs of the public love and confidence have recommended to those powers, upon the use of which the very being of the state depends.

The popular election of magistrates, and popular disposition of rewards and honors, is one of the first advantages of a free state.  Without it, or something equivalent to it, perhaps the people cannot long enjoy the substance of freedom; certainly none of the vivifying energy of good government.  The frame of our commonwealth did not admit of such an actual election:  but it provided as well, and (while the spirit of the