Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/321

Rh forbearing to excite avarice and ambition by fraudulent laws and separate interests, government will produce human happiness and comfort, and be considered as a necessary good. It has been our policy, so to divide power, and diminish the excitements of avarice and ambition, as to wring out of its soul the poisons arising from the evil qualities of monopoly; laws to foster these qualities, labour to revive what that policy labours to destroy.

If monopoly is made up of good and evil qualities; and if our policy has planted our government in its good qualities, a revolution is effected by transplanting it into its evil qualities. The constitutional corporation is endeavoured to be cleansed of avarice and ambition, the scourges of mankind; and legal corporations, having the first, which begets the other, breathed into them, as their vital principle, cannot eonstitute the same species of government.

These inimical principles cannot in nature subsist together; one must subdue, reform or contaminate the other. In England a paper system has contaminated the government; here, the only argument which can be urged against the same process and result, is, that the pure principles of our constitutional corporations, will reform the vicious principles of our legal corporations, created by themselves. Towards this experiment, the constitutional and legal corporations are mixed up together. The constitutions and laws then begin to solicit the suffrages of this compound. "Adhere to us," say the constitutions, « and we will take care that neither your ambition nor avarice shall be gratified." "Come over to us," say the laws, "and we will gratify both." Will the audience make a separate interest, which bestows on it exclusive wealth and power, subservient to the general interest, which rigidly refuses to feed it with either.