Superstition, too, may create an order of men,
who, under the title of priesthood, engage in the pursuit of a separate
interest; who, by their union and firmness as a body, and by their
incessant ambition, deserve to be reckoned in the list of pretenders to
power. These different orders of men are the elements of whose mixture the
political body is generally formed; each draws to its side some part from
the mass of the people. The people themselves are a party upon occasion;
and numbers of men, however classed and distinguished, become, by their
jarring pretensions and separate views, mutual interruptions and checks;
and have, by bringing to the national councils the maxims and apprehensions
of a particular order, and by guarding a particular interest, a share in
adjusting or preserving the political form of the state.
The pretensions of any particular order, if not checked by some collateral
power, would terminate in tyranny; those of a prince, in despotism; those
of a nobility or priesthood, in the abuses of aristocracy; of a populace,
in the confusions of anarchy.
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