Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/322

312 If it is a moral truth, that mankind prefer themselves to others, then it is a moral certainty, that members, both of the government and of the corporation, will prefer the interest of the corporation to the interest of the nation. As a member of the government, I am met constantly by division and responsibility; the money I collect from the people, must be accounted for and applied to their use; and both my power and compensation is dependent on their will. As a member of the separate interest, I tax without limitation; I receive without account: I apply to my own use; I am dependent only on my own pleasure; and I acquire the power following wealth, unsubjected to the publick suffrage. By taking the side of my own interest, I influence the government in my own favour. By taking the side of the national interest, I sacrifice my own. As all separate interests prefer themselves, and bend governments into a subserviency to their designs; so one neither responsible, nor weakened by division, nor made up of distinct independent interests, by means of different departments and unconnected offices; will act with a degree of conceit and force, for its own aggrandizement, which would be impracticable to the several governments in America. The banking power is therefore a stronger, as well as a richer power, than the civil. The holders of both will use the latter as an ally of the former: the two powers will unite in one, and all the checks invented to control the civil power, will he silently lost in the illimitable influence of the stock power. A power of regulating property is engendered, of n capacity to enslave nations surpassing a power to regulate the press, as far as an influence over a whole nation, or great factions, exceeds one over a poor author.

There is no occasion that one should be a political Linnæus, to discover the class of political systems, to which orders or separate interests belong. When such influence a government, publick opinion cannot also influence it. They do not belong to that class of political systems, which they destroy. Their essence is minority, and their principles