Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/291

Rh have each successfully resorter' to these subterfuges to keep justice at bay; and had the English House of Commons been open to the clergy, as all the departments of the American government are to stockjobbers, the former would probably have still maintained the same invaluable exclusive privilege, which the latter now enjoy.

The American constitutions are equally opposed to invasions of property by fraudulent and swindling laws; or by impracticable, dishonest and ruinous equalising reveries of political enthusiasts. They pursue the idea of securing to talents and industry their earnings, and not of transferring these earnings to others. Therefore they have rejected an equality of property, standing armies, hierarchies and privileged orders; and had they foreseen, that their principle in relation to property, was capable of being undermined by paper magick, that also would have been specifically guarded against.

Accumulations and divisions of property by law, simple or complicated, are equally adverse to our policy, and to moral rectitude. Both will excite hatred, discourage industry, and infuse knavery into the national character, by dividing it into factions, perpetually striving to pillage each other. Whether the law shall gradually transfer the property of the many to the few, or insurrection shall rapidly divide the property of the few among the many, it is equally an invasion of private property, and equally contrary to our constitutions.

If equalising and accumulating laws are the same in principle, it is inconceivable how the same mind should be able to detest the one, and approve the other. Integrity is compelled to reject both, and spurning at doctrines, calculated to incite the few to plunder the many, or the many to plunder the few, leaves every man under the strongest excitement to labour for his own and the national prosperity, from a conviction, that the laws are a mantle of justice, and not an intricate net to fish for his earnings.