Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/133

Rh several countries in prosperity, which were previously ahead of her. And in the revolution of France, the abolition of nobility, made room for a wonderful national energy and superiority, which will not be forgotten by politicians.

The history of England supports these ideas. The reign of king John ended in 1216, and that of Henry the seventh in 1509, so that the collection of Italian troubles made by Mr. Adams, is contemporary with the troubles of England during the reigns of John, Henry 3d, Edward 1st, Edw. 2d, Edw. 3d, Richard 2d, Henry 4th, 5th and 6th, Edw. 4th, Rich. 3d, and Henry 7th.

During these reigns, the nobility were rich and powerful, and the troubles of England, dreadful and unremitting. Henry the seventh began to break their power by diminishing their property, and the situation of the nation began to mend. As commerce and alienation proceeded in this work, the situation of the nation grew better; and since the new project of annually balancing property by taxation, has been substituted for the old project of a specifick landed balance, the parish poor and the publick debt, the poverty and the luxury, the vices and the wretchedness of the nation have all increased.

Powerful and wealthy orders, in no country under any form of government, have existed in union with national happiness; a system therefore, which proposes so to balance them, as to compel them to be subservient to it, is not experimental, and only a theory. Let us consider^ whether it is entitled even to the weight of naked theory.

If Mr. Adams's theory existed in England at any period, before the sixteenth century, it did not produce effects which can invite us to adopt it: and afterwards, the political progress of England received its direction from the assaults made upon the power and property of the nobility by Henry the seventh, and by alienation, commerce, paper and patronage. The system therefore is made worse than naked theory, by inimical experience. The miseries of the first period, were suddenly diminished, and the effects of the second gra-