Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what
must either render us totally desperate, or sooth us into the security
of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of
infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity
truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and
corrupt. Men are in public as in private, some good, some evil. The
elevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the first
objects of all true policy. But that form of government, which, neither
in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has
contrived to throw its affairs into the most trustworthy hands, but
has left its whole executory system to be disposed of agreeably to the
uncontrolled pleasures of any one man, however excellent or virtuous, is
a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but consequentially
erroneous in every part of it.