In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference
of interests, real or supposed is the most natural and
fruitful source of them. The great objects should be to combat
the evil: 1. By establishing political equality among all.
2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase
the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and
especially unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By the
silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of
property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity,
and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.
4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on
different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest,
at the expence of another. 5. By making one party a check
on the other, so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented,
nor their views accommodated.—If this is not the
language of reason, it is that of republicanism.
In all political societies, different interests and parties arise
out of the nature of things, and the great art of politicians
lies in making them checks and balances to each other. Let
us then increase these natural distinctions by favoring an inequality
of property; and let us add to them artificial distinctions,
by establishing kings and nobles, and plebeians.
We shall then have the more checks to oppose to each other;
we shall then have the more scales and the more weights to
protect and maintain the equilibrium. This is as little the
voice of reason, as it is of republicanism.
From the expediency, in politics, of making natural parties,
mutual checks on each other, to infer the propriety of
creating artificial parties, in order to form them into mutual
checks, is not less absurd than it would be in ethics, to say,
that new vices ought to be promoted, where they would
counteract each other, because this use may be made of
existing vices.
