Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/136

126 subsisting on the people, invariably oppress or sell them for how can they otherwise subsist?

Mr. Adams allows wealth to be the great machine for governing the world, and yet he makes no distinction between a rich order or interest, and a poor one. He has seen a rich nobility in Poland overbalance both a king and a people. He has seen a rich nobility, clergy and king in the late monarchy of France, overbalancing the people. He has seen rich barons dethroning poor kings, and poor ones the creatures of rich kings. It is in vain to say that these poor nobles have a share in the legislature, if they have neither property nor influence, to restrain or balance the wealth and influence of the king, with his army, and his patronage. A constitution, which divides rights among orders, giving to one a share, but no power to defend it; and to another a share, with power to encroach, to menace and to corrupt, will be as defective, as one which should bestow all power upon an individual, or a single assembly, with an Injunction not to abuse it.

These arguments tend to show, that a balance of orders cannot exist without a balance of property among these orders, as Lord Shaftsbury and Mr. Adams unite in asserting. Concurring with these authors, two inferences of importance present themselves.

One, that as a balance or equality of landed property cannot subsist in community with the present state of knowledge, commerce and alienation; and as a balance or equality of power, cannot subsist without a balance of property, so the system of equalising power and property between a confederation of orders, if established, could only sustain its perfection during the moment of transit over the true balance, which might occur in the flight of property on the wings of commerce, alienation and knowledge, from the minor to the numerous order. The same effects could not possibly result from the gas of a balance of property, as from a real balance itself.