Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/278

268 unsound in all the others? Or if the combination of paper stock with commerce, monarchy, legislative corruption, exclusive charters and hierarchy, proves its affinity to all, would it be best to lake all for the sake of commerce, or to reject all for the sake of liberty?

The dilemma is avoided, by exploding the errour of considering paper stock as favourable to commerce, because they exist together in England. That one is the bane of the other, we have already inferred from the necessity of Eng- land to resort to war and conquest to cultivate her commerce. That one could acquire opulence without the other, is proved in the experience of Carthage. And the early dismay with which England beheld a commercial competition with America before her introduction of paper stock, is a modern concurrence with ancient experience.

The commerce of the United States commenced its operations unconnected with paper money. an«l advanced for many years without acknowledging its aid; it was obliged to travel from one hemisphere to another, before it could enter info competition with its rivals; it was unprotected by fleets; it traded on the funds of four millions only of people, cultivating a soil, poor in comparison with many countries to be rivalled; and it possessed no foreign dominions to fleece. Yet it suddenly aroused the jealousy of the most extensive commerce in the world, by outstripping all others. These effects appeared either before it was possible for it to owe any obligations to paper money, or whilst such obligations must have been inconsiderable. But our commerce was free. Will it not act precipitately, in deserting a career so happily commenced under the auspices of freedom, to enlist under those of paper stock, from an opinion that its rival derived opulence from that source? jt may by the experiment enslave itself without enslaving India: it may oppress its land and labour associates by a fleet, without acquiring the empire of the sea; it may guide crowds of people by monopoly, into a willingness to exchange a moderate climate and fertile soil, for torrid and