Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/276

256 bestows on them wealth and power. For this purpose has English commerce been used, by paper stock, patronage and sinceure, and the maritime force necessary to sustain, is an evidence of their talent hostility towards it.

Dazzled by the splendour of English commerce; shall we forget that we cannot conquer and keep both the Indies, nor compel the would to obey a navigation act for laying it under eontribution, by the prowess of stock? Force, conquest, and colonization, furnish the food to English commerce, which it disgorges to be again swallowed by paper stock. Should our commerce mistake this devourer for nourishment, unpossessed of the power of forcing its liver to grow as it is eaten, it will soon cease to excite the jealousy of English commerce. The prosperity which has awakened that jealousy, was produced by its freedom; and the vigorous health hence derived, will speedily be exchanged for the hypochondriacal, and convulsive fluctuations of law, war, and stockjobbing, if it is placed under the patronage of paper stock.

Charter, monopoly and aristocracy in their several forms (those of funding and banking excepted) have been considered by commerce as her foes. She will not even own for her friends, monopolies bestowed on merchants; and although, under the delusion of containing within herself qualities for constituting separate orders or interests, she has sometimes obtained them, yet she has universally upon trial found them unnatural to her constitution.

Adverse to this idea is the paradoxical opinion, that commerce may he made to flourish, by a paper capital, local, fictitious, and oppressive to land and labour. An opinion, contradicted by the commerce of Carthage, under a defective navigation; and by the inability of English commerce to meet its rivals with the advantages of the greatest stock capital in the world, a superiority of manufactures, geographical advantages, and an irresistible navy. She doffs the habiliments of a peaceable trader, cases herself in armour, and kills or maims her relations, to support that