Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/337

Rh the nobles to the house of commons, would have destroyed the theory of checks and balances, although these interests might be avoided by the people in elections; we cannot fail to discern the reason, why the eligibility of the stock interest to that house, (which cannot be avoided by the people) converts it into an instrument for effecting, what it was intended to prevent; namely, the predominance of a separate interest over the national interest. Is a corruption, poisonous to the British theory, salutary to the American?

Though an order or distinct interest is compounded of many members, it constitutes only one body, guided by self-interest. Whenever in a combat between two men, a leg or an arm of one shall desert to the other, then a member of the stock interest may be expected to desert to the national interest. Add to the cement of wealth a mass of political power, gotten by election, and a Colossus rises up, animated by one mind, who easily makes the havock of the national interest required by his own, because its members are never united by one mind, and lie about, so scattered and disjointed, that he picks up and uses them as weapons for assailing the body they belong to. The capacity of a paper interest in England, to make instruments of orators, kings, lords and commons, evinces its gigantick power.

What! exclaims both the friend and the foe, to publick good; shall we have no corporations, no colleges, no turnpikes, no canals, because they are separate interests? Do not charter and privilege s^'cw the face of a country with palaces and plenty? Yes, and with huts and penury.

With equal propriety it might be asked, if we can have The magistrates, unless these magistrates are kings or nobles? The assertion that these beget liberty, made by the admirers of monarchy, is equivalent to the assertion, that paper orders beget national prosperity, made by the lovers of stock. As the first is asserted of the most inveterate enemies to liberty, the other is asserted of an inveterate enemy to property. Magistrates may be so moulded as to