Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

FROM THE REPERTORY.

Uncontroled Power is Despotism.

Indeed we know no existing despotism absolutely free from control; and we scarcely know any thing that does in fact control it, without making it more tolerable. The Parliaments, though only courts of law, actually controled the arbitrary power of the Bourbons. Bonaparte regards no control but that of his army; and as long as he can manage the simplest but most forcible of all the instruments of power, he laughs at metaphysics, and Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and has the blood of all France as much at command, as if it stood on tap in his wine cellar.

Superstition limits the power of the Grand Turk, and immemorial custom, almost every where, interposes its shield, to protect the prostrate and abject children of slavery. Manners are long enforced after laws are violated; and the tyrant's thunder, that is generated by the collision of the clouds, is imprisoned or disarmed by the non electric atmosphere over our heads.

But of all tyrannies, that of a conquering party is the least capable of control. Its vengeance is as little restrained by policy as by pity. It is an earthquake that kindles in the caverns below, and by loosening the foundations whelms a society at once into irretrievable destruction.

When therefore the fools of the democratic party rejoice that federalism is sinking, their folly is their excuse But surely such men as Mr. Randolph would not wish to plead the blind infatuation of the Sloans and Smilies, for the ruin to liberty that he is aiding and assisting to hasten.

If the federalists possess only a little power of checking and controlling party despotism, that little is precious. It is the long boat or plank, on which our ship wrecked liberty may float alive for some time, on the tempestuous sea.

Suppose it nothing, and the shameless tyranny of Tiberius and Nero, nay worse, of the Paris committees of murder and pillage, will ensue. When therefore we see men of any sense so eager to annihilate federalism, it is evident they are in a hurry to enjoy power, without control, which, we repeat is despotism.