In these critical
moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and
respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career,
and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves,
until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the
public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have
often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard
against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then
have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens
the hemlock on one day and statues on the next.
It may be suggested, that a people spread over an extensive region
cannot, like the crowded inhabitants of a small district, be subject to
the infection of violent passions, or to the danger of combining in
pursuit of unjust measures. I am far from denying that this is a
distinction of peculiar importance. I have, on the contrary, endeavored
in a former paper to show, that it is one of the principal
recommendations of a confederated republic. At the same time, this
advantage ought not to be considered as superseding the use of auxiliary
precautions.
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