Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/332

322 possession of these tenants for years will become a set- lied right, and the remainder-man will forget his reversion.

A power to make irrepealable law charters, is above responsibility, and independent of its constituent. The correction of a corrupt or ruinous measure, comprises all the essence and benefit of responsibility. A change of representatives, without this correction, is a barren formality. It is even impolitick, unless followed by a correction of the mischief which suggested the change. New representatives will be incited by the preservation of a pecuniary abuse? to repeat it for their own emolument; if they are not permitted to destroy it, they will think it right to reimburse themselves by a new charter, for their sufferings under the old.

The infatuation opposed to the reasoning, which discloses the destruction of responsibility and legislative integrity, lurking in the system of charter and banking, is an unexamined idea, that our constitutions contain some charm, some magical influence, which will preserve liberty, by the agency of avaricious charter-making and charter-taking representatives. History produces no instance of national happiness, under a legislature, corrupted by the most sordid passion, of which human nature is susceptible. Legislative purity might preserve liberty and happiness, under constitutions otherwise defective; but the most perfect constitutions otherwise, could not preserve liberty and happiness, with legislative corruption.

In all ages legal beings have been invented, which contend that man was made for them, and not they for him. Having both escaped from his service, and converted him into their servant, they invest themselves with a drapery of glittering fictions, to dazzle him into submission. Hierarchy, though always defended by whatever could inspire reverence, and often dressed in the robes of religion, has at length fallen before the solid principle, "that civil institution? belong to nations n:id that nations do not belong; to