Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/323

Rh must participate of their essence; and if it is good governnent to consult the national interest, they must uniformly be opposed to good government, because they constantly consult their own interest.

"Without closely estimating the political influence ef the species of separate interest called banking, we can at a glance discover, that a power to give and receive charters, to draw wealth from the people, and to share in it, and to obtain adherents at the publick expense, is a great power. It is that which I have called legislative patronage.

This excessive power, like all others, will act upon the moral qualities of human nature. Its pecuniary seductiveness, is exactly opposed to the policy, supposed by all our constitutions to be most likely to awaken the good mural qualities of human nature; and exactly such, as have constantly awakened its evil. Nations, resorting to elective and representative forms of government, consider a strict similitude between the interest of the legislature and of the people, as the chief security for fidelity. They have never divided these interests, by establishing a difference, to the extent of five millions annually, to be paid b;, the one, and received in money or power by the other: no free constitution has ever declared, that a legislator might legislate wealth to himself, and taxes to the people; and no man in his senses ever thinks of securing the honesty of an agent, by a powerful temptation to betray him. Even the king of England cannot himself pass a law, to inflict the million he receives; whilst the legislators of these states might receive the five millions they inflict by banking, and do receive a considerable portion of it. On the contrary, all our constitutions consider it as a sacred principle, that legislators should really, and not nominally, be affected by the good or evil dispensed by law, as the nation is affected. As a majority of a nation cannot be bankers, the opening of a subscription to all is a formality, the futility of which is demonstrable in the certain and necessary result of this formality. That, if! variably places the legislator-stockholder