Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/104

94 proof, that a landed aristocracy can never be created in the United States, as a member of Mr. Adams's system.

The other mode of coming at this balance, is to transfer property to the system of paper and patronage. And this being the only practicable mode, those who calculate that the system of balancing power and property, will bestow on them an unequal share of both, will use it as the only means of advancing that system. This would create a monopoly of property, not by taking the lands from the owners directly, but by taking their profits indirectly, with charters of profit, stock and patronage. By this mode, the president must be endowed with the patronage and the annual million of the king of England, to bestow on him the wealth necessary to form one order, and a monied aristocracy must be raised by such pretexts as may occur, to create another.

The motto therefore proposes two questions for the reader's consideration. One, whether this English system of balancing power and property, as existing when Shaftsbury wrote, or at this time, is the system of the United States: the other, whether it would be wise or just in the United Stales, to exchange their system for it.

To determine the first question, the fact will suffice. That, as stated by Lord Shaftsbury, and contended for by Mr. Adams, simply is, that an allotment of property and power is necessary among the one, the few and the many, to sustain or create, the English or Mr. Adams's system of government. And it is explicitly declared, that this allotment must amount to a balance or an equality. Hence, it is obvious, that the orders consisting of the one and the few, must each be endowed with a portion of power and proper ly equal to that bestowed on the order consisting of the many. Therefore the system can neither subsist or be introduced without a vast accumulation of power and property in the individual and the minor order. Such is the fact on one side. On the other, it is a fact equally undeniable, that it is the policy of the United States to divide, and not to