Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/320

310 When we behold an honest indignation against the system of privileged and monopolized wisdom, and an honest approbation of the system of privileged and monopolized credit, existing in the same mind, why should we be proud of the human intellect?

The pecuniary sufferings of nations from banking may be exhibited with some accuracy by figures, and though figures cannot exhibit its drafts upon their political principles, we may conclude with almost equal certainty, that a separate factitious interest, will not preserve a free government in America, because it has never done so in any other country. Monopoly, like other evils, takes refuge under some good. It attempts to include within its scope, the acquisitions of talents and industry, and to confound them with those of legal fraud; and to consider private property, roads and canals, whence arise good effects, as of the same nature with hierarchy, nobility, banks, or any species of legal separate interest, though productive only of political oppression or pecuniary fraud.

Admitting private property, however incorrectly, to be a species of monopoly, its effects, such as subsistence, comfort, and a multitude of physical benefits, draw a distinct line between it and the fraud er force of hierarchical and feudal usurpations. These, instead of possessing a common nature with private property, diminish or defeat its benefits.

Government, considered as a monopoly, has also been called a necessary evil, because it has been almost universally planted in its evil and not in its good qualities. A monopoly is erected, calculated to awaken the avarice and ambition of its members; these evil qualities are accordingly awakened; they resort to force and fraud for their own gratification; and such monopolies beget the civil tyranny, denominated a necessary evil.

But as private property may be planted in the good or in the evil qualities of monopoly, so may a government; by banishing fraud or force, as means of acquiring private property, its protection begets beneficial effects; and by