Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/317

Rh ser for chartered bank currency. And a nation will defend its own credit with more animation, whilst it diminishes their taxes, by bringing them revenue; than it will bank credit, which increases their taxes, without bringing them revenue. National credit would arouse bravery, interest and patriotism, like other property but bank and funding credit, cannot inspire a nation with patriotism, because it is a tax gatherer, which zealously engages in the wars of ambition, avarice and orders, and flees from imminent national danger. A rapacious coward cannot make a nation brave.

If the credit of a whole nation is perfidious, it only aggravates the absurdity of purchasing a portion of its own perfidious credit, at an enormous price; and of expecting to cure the perfidy of the whole, by attaching to a part, the additional excitements towards treachery, arising from exclusive privilege and separate interest. These never had any business in society, but to corrupt governments and plunder nations. They are exactly the remedy, universally proposed by the enemies of the principle of self-government, for this imaginary evil of national perfidy to itself National credit, say they, is perfidious, Resort therefore to corporation, vendible, monopolized and successional credit, as a much better shield for liberty, Equally perfidious, in their opinion, is national wisdom, and therefore they recommend titled, hereditary and successional wisdom, as also a better shield for liberty. Such opinions are consistent. But how can those be reconciled, which assert, that treachery to liberty forever lurks in hereditary, successional and monopolized wisdom, and that her safety consists in vendible, successional and monopolized credit?

Pennsylvanian credit, produces the benefit of a revenue, as national wisdom does that of freedom; and corporation credit produces taxation, as hereditary wisdom does tyranny. As credit can produce revenue, it is property, and will be considered, whether as such, it can under our policy be thrown into a state of monopoly, or disposed of by ex-