All the great services that are done in the world are performed by volunteer characters, who accept nothing for them; but the routine of office is always regulated to such a general standard of abilities as to be within the compass of numbers in every country to perform, and therefore cannot merit very extraordinary recompense.
Government, says Swift, is a Plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads.
It is inhuman to talk of a million sterling a year, paid out of the public taxes of any country, for the support of any individual, whilst thousands who are forced to contribute thereto, are pining with want, and struggling with misery.Government does not consist in a contrast between prisons and palaces, between poverty and pomp; it is not instituted to rob the needy of his mite, and increase the wretchedness of the wretched.- But on this part of the subject I shall speak hereafter, and confine myself at present to political observations.
When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms.Give to any man a million a year, and add thereto the power of creating and disposing of places, at the expense of a country, and the liberties of that country are no longer secure.What is called the splendour of a throne is no other than the corruption of the state.
It is made up of a band of parasites, living in luxurious indolence, out of the public taxes.
When once such a vicious system is established it becomes the guard and protection of all inferior abuses.The man who is in the receipt of a million a year is the last person to promote a spirit of reform, lest, in the event, it should reach to himself.It is always his interest to defend inferior abuses, as so many outworks to protect the citadel; and on this species of political fortification, all the parts have such a common dependence that it is never to be expected they will attack each other.*[24]
Monarchy would not have continued so many ages in the world, had it not been for the abuses it protects.It is the master-fraud, which shelters all others.By admitting a participation of the spoil, it makes itself friends; and when it ceases to do this it will cease to be the idol of courtiers.
As the principle on which constitutions are now formed rejects all hereditary pretensions to government, it also rejects all that catalogue of assumptions known by the name of prerogatives.
If there is any government where prerogatives might with apparent safety be entrusted to any individual, it is in the federal government of America.The president of the United States of America is elected only for four years.He is not only responsible in the general sense of the word, but a particular mode is laid down in the constitution for trying him.He cannot be elected under thirty-five years of age; and he must be a native of the country.
In a comparison of these cases with the Government of England, the difference when applied to the latter amounts to an absurdity.In England the person who exercises prerogative is often a foreigner; always half a foreigner, and always married to a foreigner.He is never in full natural or political connection with the country, is not responsible for anything, and becomes of age at eighteen years; yet such a person is permitted to form foreign alliances, without even the knowledge of the nation, and to make war and peace without its consent.
But this is not all.Though such a person cannot dispose of the government in the manner of a testator, he dictates the marriage connections, which, in effect, accomplish a great part of the same end.He cannot directly bequeath half the government to Prussia, but he can form a marriage partnership that will produce almost the same thing.Under such circumstances, it is happy for England that she is not situated on the Continent, or she might, like Holland, fall under the dictatorship of Prussia.Holland, by marriage, is as effectually governed by Prussia, as if the old tyranny of bequeathing the government had been the means.
The presidency in America (or, as it is sometimes called, the executive)is the only office from which a foreigner is excluded, and in England it is the only one to which he is admitted.A foreigner cannot be a member of Parliament, but he may be what is called a king.If there is any reason for excluding foreigners, it ought to be from those offices where mischief can most be acted, and where, by uniting every bias of interest and attachment, the trust is best secured.But as nations proceed in the great business of forming constitutions, they will examine with more precision into the nature and business of that department which is called the executive.What the legislative and judicial departments are every one can see; but with respect to what, in Europe, is called the executive, as distinct from those two, it is either a political superfluity or a chaos of unknown things.
Some kind of official department, to which reports shall be made from the different parts of a nation, or from abroad, to be laid before the national representatives, is all that is necessary; but there is no consistency in calling this the executive; neither can it be considered in any other light than as inferior to the legislative.
The sovereign authority in any country is the power of making laws, and everything else is an official department.
Next to the arrangement of the principles and the organization of the several parts of a constitution, is the provision to be made for the support of the persons to whom the nation shall confide the administration of the constitutional powers.
A nation can have no right to the time and services of any person at his own expense, whom it may choose to employ or entrust in any department whatever; neither can any reason be given for making provision for the support of any one part of a government and not for the other.
