Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/270

260 bution may occasionally add to the numbers benefitted by it, these additions are recruits similar to new levies added to an army, or new priests added to an established church. In all three of these eases, an interest, created by law, and subsisting upon a nation, becomes stronger, by multiplying the individuals united to it with a participation in its income; ^nd weaker, by diminishing the number of these individuals. Such interests are incapable, as will presently be proved, of including the majority of a nation, or of a general division among its members; the cement of fear, excited by a perpetual danger of the stroke of death, from their creator, law; and a consciousness of physical imbecility, distinguish them from the object of their apprehensions.

None of these causes will prevent a landed interest from being weakened by a division of lands. Land is not created by law: therefore it is under no apprehension of its death stroke from law. It does not subsist upon other interests; therefore it is not beset by an host of enemies, whose vengeance it is conscious of deserving. By the operation of laws adverse to its monopoly, it quickly adjusts itself to the interest of a majority of a nation; thenceforward it is incapable of the avarice and injustice of a factitious legal interest, because no temptation to seduce it into either, exists. To this point of improvement, a landed interest will invariably be brought, by laws for dividing lands; nor can it be corrupted, except by laws which confine lands to a minority. Then it becomes in a degree a factitious legal monopoly, capable of being favoured by law, and infected with a portion of that malignity, which constitutes the entire essence of a minor separate interest purely factitious. A paper, a military, or an established church interest, cannot, it has been asserted, include a majority of a nation, as may a landed: because a majority cannot live upon a minority, but a majority may live upon land. Let us take a paper interest of any kind to illustrate this assertion. It is simply debt, in all its forms. If I give a bond to myself, it does not add to my wealth, or create a new interest. If