Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/273

Rh division. And though this landed interest may not suddenly sink into an ignorant, scattered, disunited peasantry, taxed by paper operations, to enrich. instruct and elevate a new species of Feudal capitalists, yet the tendency of the system is exactly to that point, and the arrival of an unobstructed tendency, is inevitable.

If the division of landed property has a tendency to increase the ignorance of the numerous and valuable portion of society which cultivate it, a defect of the American policy in not providing some remedy to meet this evil, is disclosed. From preventing an accumulation of landed wealth, and providing for a monied or stock monopoly of knowledge, a reason arises for placing the best educations within the reach of that great mass of people, called the landed interest; instead of which its inability to purchase knowledge is studiously increased, by a division of inheritances, and by the annual draughts upon it for the interest and dividends of debt and hank stock. The ignorance of land holders will thus in time he brought to a standard exactly sufficient to render them tame, and subservient to the interest of a stock aristocracy; an event which may even be accelerated, by taxing them for the purpose of diffusing a knowledge of the vulgar tongue, and vulgar arithmetick. These laws for dividing landed property, and levelling landed knowledge, form a striking contrast with those for accumulating stock wealth, and of course stock knowledge. Are both consistent with the principles of our governments? If I wished to level a field, merely preserving that degree of inequality, necessary to prevent the effects of stagnation, ought I to rear a mountain in the midst of it ? Is an accumulation of wealth and knowledge by law in a few hands, to be found in any recipe for making a free republick?

The errour of landed wealth. in favouring a paper aristocracy, because it is friendly to a landed one, rises into view at this moment. It does not perceive that even in England, a landed aristocracy has been vanquished and is governed by a paper or stock aristocracy. It does not per-