It has been often affirmed that our Revolution forms the most important epoch in the history of mankind. But whence does it derive its importance?
The sentiment is founded in a belief that it has introduced a system of new governments better calculated to secure the blessings of liberty, and under circumstances more favorable to success, than any which the world ever knew before. If such be the fact, the truth of the affirmation must be conceded, for surely no event can be so important, as the establishment of a new system of government, which by its intrinsic merit, and the force of example, promises to promote so essentially the happiness of mankind.
Other republics have failed. Their career, though brilliant, was marked by contentions which frequently convulsed and finally overthrew them. To what causes were those contentions imputable? Was it that the governments respectively were so defective that their failure was inevitable? Or were the societies, of which those republics were composed, incapable of such governments? To one or other of those causes, or to a combination of them, their fate must have been imputable. Do like causes exist here? If they do, it follows that we are exposed in a certain degree at least to a like fate. These are fair objects of inquiry.
The questions to be solved are, have we so far avoided the errors and corrected the defects of other free governments, as to have attained a degree of perfection which was unknown to them? Are our societies in a state better adapted to the support of such governments, than those of any other people ever were, over whom such governments were established? If we have been thus blessed, it must follow that the example of other republics cannot touch ours, and that we have just cause to calculate on a destiny altogether different from that which befel other people, even those who were most free. We shall have gained an eminence, which no other nation ever reached, and from which, if we fall, the fault will be in ourselves, and we shall thereby give the most discouraging example to mankind that the world ever witnessed.
If a people be free and their governments be defective, why do they not amend it? As the injury arising from the defects of the government must be felt in its operation, and the defects be in consequence, apparent, it is strange having the power exclusively in their hands, if they do not amend them. And if the people participate only in the government, by the occupation of any strong and independant ground in the system, it cannot but excite surprise, having numbers and force on their side, if they should be driven from it; if instead of improving their position, they should lose it altogether. However defective, therefore, the government of the ancient republics may have been, it is obvious that their overthrow could not have been imputable to those defects only; that it may be traced in oart at least, to a higher source, to the people themselves. No people blessed with liberty could be deprived of it, if they were not made dupes and the instruments of their own destruction. If they possessed the necessary intelligence and virtue, acted together, and made a common cause in defense of their rights, the artifices of unprincipled and designing men, however deep and well-contrived they might be, would be sure to fail.
It follows then, that the subject merits attention in two views; the first, as to the different kinds of government which have existed in different communities in different ages; the second, as to the condition of the society, in the several communities, over which such governments respectively were established. Government is divisible, from one which is compatible with, and secures to the people under it perfect liberty, to that which subjects them to abject slavery; and society, from a state of entire barbarism, ignorance and depravity, to that of great improvement, intelligence and purity. No proposition admits of a more satisfactory demonstration, than that in the formation of government, the condition of the society on which it is to operate is to be regarded; that the government which suits one state will not suit another, and that the most improved state of society is that which is best suited to the most free government.
In treating then of government, we must treat of man, for it is for him that government the government is formed, and for whom it is indespensable.