University of Virginia Library

1835. CORRUPTION, Government and.—[further continued].

Mankind soon learn to
make interested uses of every right and power
which they possess, or may assume. The
public money and public liberty, intended [in
the Virginia constitution] to have been deposited
with three branches of magistracy,
but found inadvertently to be in the hands of
one only, will soon be discovered to be sources
of wealth and dominion to those who hold
them; distinguished, too, by this tempting circumstance,
that they are the instrument, as
well as the object, of acquisition. With
money we will get men, said Caesar, and with
men we will get money.—
Notes on Virginia. Washington ed. viii, 362. Ford ed., iii, 224.
(1782)