Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/287

Rh The system of paper monopoly deceives no less by rejecting, than by assuming names. It renounces titles, that it may be thought to have renounced aristocracy. And it renounces disorderly government, that it may be thought to have a regard for private property. But titles are inconsistent with its species of aristocracy, and property is more securely and permanently invaded and transferred, by a regular and orderly system, than by occasional and disorderly violations.

This love of property is artfully seized by the system of paper and patronage, as a handle with which to guide human nature. Whilst superstition was its strongest passion, that was the handle used for the same purpose. But this system, discovering that a love of superstition has given place to a love of property, and concluding that mankind are fated for ever to be traitors to their reason and dupes to their passions, moulds them to its purposes by the same means which superstition used successfully for ages.

Had the system of paper and patronage, proposed to give property in Heaven for property on earth, the countless profit of the exchange might have reasonably attracted the passion of avarice, and in some measure varnished over the imposture; but when it imposes on a love of property, by pretending to revere and protect, that which its only employment is to violate and transfer, we cannot forbear to exclaim, that avarice is a greater fool than superstition; we are dismayed at discovering that a stronger engine for manufacturing tyranny exists, than superstition itself; the mind startles at its own imbecility, and shudders at its visible love of imposture.

A love of property, under which the system of paper and patronage crouches, is the very passion by which it ought to be assailed. All frauds pretend to be founded upon the principles, which apply most forcibly against them; just as superstition pretended to be religion. So this system uses the passion of avarice in others, to gratify its own. By pretending to protect property, it arquires properly. It