Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/292

282 Our policy is founded upon the idea, that it is both wise and just, to leave the distribution of property to industry and talents; that what they acquire is all their own, except what they owe to society; that they owe nothing to society except a contribution equivalent to the necessities of government; that they owe nothing to monopoly or exclusive privilege in any form; and that whether they are despoiled by the rage of a mob, or the laws of a separate interest, the genuine sanction of private property is equally violated. Are these the principles of our policy? Do paper systems correspond with these principles?

If legislative patronage enriches a portion of society, that portion is necessarily converted into an order, possessing the qualities of an aristocracy. It is placed between the government and the nation. It receives wealth from the one, and takes it from the other. This ties it to the government by the passion of avarice, and separates it from the nation by the passion of fear. And these two passions, annexed to any separate interest, have unexceptionably converted it into a political order, and forced it into the ranks of despotism.

War, in former times, enriched and aggrandized by conquest; in modern, by loaning. Titled orders, in the first case, usurped and monopolized what the nations they belonged to, conquered from their enemies; and by means of this usurped wealth, enslaved the conquerors. Paper orders acquire wealth in modern wars by loaning, although nothing is obtained by conquest. Now, a nation, by war without conquest, is made to furnish the means for its own subjection. The enemies of the Roman people, supplied the means for enslaving the Roman people. The English pay for their slavery themselves. An interest enriched by war, successful or unfortunate, must be separate and aristocratical.

Nations have effected an improvement in universal law, or the law of nations, without deriving from it the greatest advantage it is calculated to produce. Conquest respects