The number engaged in crimes, instead of turning them into laudable
acts, only augments the quantity and intensity of the guilt. I am well
aware that men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme
disrelish to be told of their duty. This is of course; because every
duty is a limitation of some power. Indeed, arbitrary power is so much
to the depraved taste of the vulgar, of the vulgar of every description,
that almost all the dissensions which lacerate the commonwealth are not
concerning the manner in which it is to be exercised, but concerning the
hands in which it is to be placed. Somewhere they are resolved to have
it. Whether they desire it to be vested in the many or the few depends
with most men upon the chance which they imagine they themselves may
have of partaking in the exercise of that arbitrary sway, in the one
mode or in the other.
It is not necessary to teach men to thirst after power. But it is very
expedient that by moral instruction they should be taught, and by their
civil constitutions they should be compelled, to put many restrictions
upon the immoderate exercise of it, and the inordinate desire.
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