Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/256

246 The possibility of that species of tyranny, arising from an union between an elective legislature, and an interest different from the national interest, was contemplated by all our constitutions; and the whole fund of foresight then existing brought to hear against it. For tins precise end, innumerable precautions were used, to subject law-makers to the national will; to prevent them from getting wealth from the nation by their own laws; and to expose them equally with other citizens, to oppressive laws. But all these precautions are destroyed by the legal inventions of funding, banking and Charter, more effectually than the liberty of the press was destroyed by a sedition law. The reader will not require a catalogue of cases, to prove how deeply laws can wound constitutions, after this reference has awakened his recollection.

Admitting that the power of creating debt, must necessarily reside in a government, yet, next to the power of raising armies, it is the most dangerous with which it can be invested. Mankind may be governed by money or arms. Both these powers admit of checks, and requited them, as being more dangerous than any others. An armed nation would have been a check upon the one; and an effectual exclusion from the legislature, of any participation in the profits of debt, created by funding or banking, would have been a cheek upon the other.

But a borrowing power itself is rendered questionable, by considering its origin and effects. We possess a correct history of two paper systems only; those of England and America. The first was produced by the personal hatred of William of Orange for Lewis the 14th, the rapacity of Marlborough and Eugene, and the need of a disputed title to a crown, for partisans. The second also followed a revolution, without having contributed towards it; compensated publick services by the tax of appreciation, after they had paid that of depreciation; and transferred much of the reward for which an army bled in defence of their country, to those who had shed that blood. To gratify a king's