Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/283

Rh said, that paper stock or national debt is an augmentation of national property, in addition to its retributing a nation for the taxes it inflicts, by the industry it excites.

The 5th chapter of Sterne's posthumous works, gives an account of a pamphlet written by himself in defence of Sir Robert Walpole, and contains the origin of this doctrine. He proved, says he, "that the accumulation of taxes, like the rising of rents, was the surest token of a nation's thriving; that the dearness of markets, with these new imposts of government, necessarily doubled industry; and that an increase of this natural kind of manufacture, was adding to the capital stock of the commonwealth." He subjoins, "that his book had been the codex, or ars polilica of all the ministerial sycophants ever since that æra; and that he had scarcely met with a paragraph in any of the state hireling writers, for many years past, that he could not trace fairly back to his own code."

If American commerce, dazzled with the glare of the English, produced by consuming great masses of domestick and foreign happiness, is insensible to the prophelick satire of Sterne, and the catastrophe hovering over her rival, we must intreat her to have recourse to her own skill in calculation, and to estimate political consequences, with only half the attention she would devote to a trading voyage.

Mr. Adams has told her, that three orders, two of them hereditary, are necessary to create a limited monarchy, a monarchical republick, or the English form of government. We remind her, that orders appear in every monarchy, limited or despotick. The nobility of Germany, France and Spain, the Mandarins of China, the Nabobs of India, the Bashaws of Turkey, and the military order in every form, are proofs, that monarchy, mixed or pure, can only be supported by orders.

If we have proved, that paper systems lead to the establishment of orders; and if those which are guilty of oppression, or those which suffer it, are naturally driven to monarchy for defence or protection; orders or separate and