ther
than the corruption of the state. It is made up of a band of parasites,
living in luxurious indolence, out of the public taxes.

When once such a vicious system is established it becomes the guard and
protection of all inferior abuses. The man who is in the receipt of a
million a year is the last person to promote a spirit of reform, lest,
in the event, it should reach to himself. It is always his interest to
defend inferior abuses, as so many outworks to protect the citadel; and
on this species of political fortification, all the parts have such a
common dependence that it is never to be expected they will attack each
other.*[24]

Monarchy would not have continued so many ages in the world, had it not
been for the abuses it protects. It is the master-fraud, which shelters
all others. By admitting a participation of the spoil, it makes itself
friends; and when it ceases to do this it will cease to be the idol of
courtiers.

As the principle on which constitutions are now formed rejects all
hereditary pretensions to government, it also rejects all that catalogue
of assumptions known by the name of prerogatives.

If there is any government where prerogatives might with apparent safety
be entrusted to any individual, it is in the federal government of
America. The president of the United States of America is elected only
for four years. He is not only responsible in the general sense of the
word, but a particular mode is laid down in the constitution for trying
him. He cannot be elected under thirty-five years of age; and he must be
a native of the country.

In a comparison of these cases with the Government of England, the
difference when applied to the latter amounts to an absurdity. In
England the person who exercises prerogative is often a foreigner;
always half a foreigner, and always married to a foreigner. He is
never in full natural or political connection with the country, is not
responsible for anything, and becomes of age at eighteen years; yet
such a person is permitted to form foreign alliances, without even the
knowledge of the nation, and to make war and peace without its consent.

But this is not all. Though such a person cannot dispose of the
government in the manner of a testator, he dictates the marriage
connections, which, in effect, accomplish a great part of the same end.
He cannot directly bequeath half the government to Prussia, but he can
form a marriage partnership that will produce al