Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/297

Rh content to lose the profit for the sake of the occupation. We forget that the safety of properly consists in the enjoyment of its profits; and that the utmost permanent violation of which it is capable, is consistent with occupation and subsistence.

The history of Villanage illustrates this idea. Villains were nominally emancipated for the interest of the masters, not of the slaves. With subsistence and the occupation of property as tenants, they were more profitable to the barons than in a state of direct slavery. Paper systems, taking the hint from this history, have artfully placed themselves in the predicament of the feudal lords; and nations, in that of emancipated villains. The profits are taken, the occupation left, and this is called freedom or protection of property.

These systems, being simply compounded of debt and taxation, must divide a nation into annuitants and labourers, engender want and luxury, reduce each individual to the alternative of oppressing or being oppressed, and cultivate avarice and rapaciousness both by the gain they bestow, and the loss they inflict. Divines and philosophers may possibly have erred in omitting hitherto to recommend such principles, as promoters of virtue, religion and national happiness. Whether politicians have found out, that a power in legislators to enrich themselves by stock of their own creation, will perfect the system of election and representation, is hereafter to be considered.

A nation is never conquered by an army, or enslaved by a faction, so long as it is willing to defend itself. The concentration of wealth in a few hands, obliterates this disposition. The disciplined Romans were subdued by raw barbarians, when the lands of Italy were held by less than three thousand proprietors. The feudal nations were weak, whilst a few nobles held the property of the nation; and their petty wars were rendered less destructive by this national imbecility. The same consequence resulted from the possession of one third of the property of a nation by the priesthood. And stock in England, which covers and