Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/301

Rh force against banking; and that the latter subject is considered separately, not as being of a very different nature, but for the sake of perspicuity; we will enter directly upon it.

Had banking been called "a paper feudal system," and had the barons proposed to take it by that denomination as a reimbursement for their abolished tenures, it might have been fairly weighed against the landed feudal system, to estimte the effects of the exchange. In that event, it would have been clearly seen by the people, that the money to be collected by "a paper feudal system" for their lords, was the representative of the services rendered under the landed feudal system; and that whatever convenience they alight derive from altering the mode of payment, the payment itself would remain. Money, or a circulating medium of any kind, in its quality of representing property and labour, conveys property and labour to its possessor; and if A, entitled to the menial services of B, contracts to receive of B their value in money, though B may prefer this mode of payment, he must still perform the same value in labour to acquire the money it is commuted for. Such bargains were often made between the kings and the people of England, in the sale and purchase of vexatious prerogatives. If then a nation bestows a pecuniary income on an order of nobles or of bankers, it conveys so much of its services to this order as the money represents; nor is there any difference between rendering the services in kind, and in the pecuniary commutation, except in the superior convenience of the latter mode; since the services must be still performed. If a great nation owed its personal labours to one thousand individuals, so much excepted as might afford a bare subsistence, it would mend its condition in a small degree, by purchasing them out for an annuity in money; but not in a great one, if it paid to the order the full value of them. As money is a vehicle for retaining, it is also one for conveying the most oppressive usurpations, and possesses a complete capacity for re-enslaving nations indirectly.