Every good political institution must have a preventive operation as
well as a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude
bad men from Government, and not to trust for the safety of the
State to subsequent punishment alone--punishment which has ever been
tardy and uncertain, and which, when power is suffered in bad hands,
may chance to fall rather on the injured than the criminal.
Before men are put forward into the great trusts of the State, they
ought by their conduct to have obtained such a degree of estimation
in their country as may be some sort of pledge and security to the
public that they will not abuse those trusts. It is no mean
security for a proper use of power, that a man has shown by the
general tenor of his actions, that the affection, the good opinion,
the confidence of his fellow-citizens have been among the principal
objects of his life, and that he has owed none of the gradations of
his power or fortune to a settled contempt or occasional forfeiture
of their esteem.
That man who, before he comes into power, has no friends, or who,
coming into power, is obliged to desert his friends, or who, losing
it, has no friends to sympathise with him, he who has no sway among
any part of the landed or commercial interest, but whose whole
importance has begun with his office, and is sure to end with it, is
a person who ought never to be suffered by a controlling Parliament,
to continue in any of those situations which confer the lead and
direction of all our public affairs; because such a man HAS NO
CONNECTION WITH THE SENTIMENTS AND OPINIONS OF THE PEOPLE.
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