However proper or safe it may be in governments where the executive
magistrate is an hereditary monarch, to commit to him the entire power
of making treaties, it would be utterly unsafe and improper to intrust
that power to an elective magistrate of four years' duration. It has
been remarked, upon another occasion, and the remark is unquestionably
just, that an hereditary monarch, though often the oppressor of his
people, has personally too much stake in the government to be in any
material danger of being corrupted by foreign powers. But a man raised
from the station of a private citizen to the rank of chief magistrate,
possessed of a moderate or slender fortune, and looking forward to a
period not very remote when he may probably be obliged to return to the
station from which he was taken, might sometimes be under temptations to
sacrifice his duty to his interest, which it would require superlative
virtue to withstand. An avaricious man might be tempted to betray the
interests of the state to the acquisition of wealth. An ambitious man
might make his own aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the
price of his treachery to his constituents.
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