The full paragraph from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
To trace the mischievous effects of a mutable government, would fill a volume.
I will hint a few only, each of which will be perceived to be a source of
innumerable others.
In the first place, it forfeits the respect and confidence of other nations,
and all the advantages connected with national character. An individual
who is observed to be inconstant to his plans, or perhaps to carry on his
affairs without any plan at all, is marked at once by all prudent people,
as a speedy victim to his own unsteadiness and folly. His more friendly
neighbours may pity him, but all will decline to connect their fortunes
with his: and not a few will seize the opportunity of making their fortunes
out of his. One nation is to another, what one individual is to another;
with this melancholy distinction perhaps, that the former, with fewer of
the benevolent emotions than the latter, are under fewer restraints also
from taking undue advantage of the indiscretions of each other. Every nation,
consequently, whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability, may
calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic
policy of its wiser neighbours. But the best instruction on this subject
is unhappily conveyed to America by the example of her own situation. She
finds that she is held in no respect by her friends; that she is the derision
of her enemies; and that she is a prey to every nation which has an interest
in speculating on her fluctuating councils and embarrassed affairs.
The internal effects of a mutable policy are still
more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will
be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their
own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or
so incoherent that they cannot be understood: if they be repealed or
revised before they are promulg[at]ed, or undergo such incessant changes,
that no man who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will
be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule
of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed.
Another effect of public instability, is the unreasonable advantage it
gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the monied few, over the
industrious and uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning
commerce or revenue, or in any manner affecting the value of the different
species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change,
and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but
by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. This
is a state of things in which it may be said, with some truth, that laws
are made for the few, not for the many.
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