Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/103

Rh derived from prerogative, by some patronage, and by an annuity for life; and on the part of the nobility, by the extent and value of their manors. Now, the last weight, is no longer in the scale; and the first, has become ponderous. Is the balance between these two orders, even without taking into the account the new weight created by paper and patronage, what it was a century past? If not, will different weights, a new or a broken balance, supply Mr. Adams with the same mathematical maxims of government, which Shaftsbury, mathematically also, extracted from a different balance?

Both these authors unequivocally affirm the necessity of a balance of property, whereon to establish the balance of power constituting the English system. Let us apply this awful acknowledgement to the situation of the United States, without suffering political prejudice to suspend our judgments. Does this balance of property, indispensable to the British and Mr. Adams's system, in the opinion of Shaftsbury and Mr. Adams, exist here? If not, with what propriety has Mr. Adams contended that his system, was the system of the United States? Of his, this balance of property is the essence; of theirs, it forms no part.

The admitted necessity of a balance of property, for the existence of Mr. Adams's system, unfolds visibly to every politician, however superficial, that his system cannot exist without it; and the mode of introducing a balance of property here, is then to be considered.

By two ways only, has it ever been effected in England. First, by royal domains and feudal baronies. Secondly, by a million annuity, executive patronage, and the paper system. To effect this balance of property here in the first mode, it would be necessary to strip a sufficient number of landholders of their property, for the purpose of creating a landed king, and a landed aristocracy: but as this mode of making a balance of property among orders, would be too direct to be safe, the observation only furnishes a conclusive