Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/338

328 turn out despots: charters, as to turn out thieves; oppression, under pretence of protecting; and fraud, under pretence of enriching, are not novelties. Magistrates and separate interests, moulded to advance the publick good, are blessings; but for gratifying ambition or avarice, are curses. Although the king of England has but few domains, yet the English civil power, is that generated by a rich government and a poor people; whilst the reverse is superficially the ease. The phenomenon is resolved by considering the power carried by wealth to the paper, patronage and church separate interests, as given by the government to itself, at the expense of the people; and demonstrates by experiment a mode of usurpation. Walpole strengthened the English government by stock and taxes. Five millions annual income to bank stockolders, create a more alarming degree of power, than if the five millions had been given to one man; it makes a multitude ardent in the cause of fraud and oppression, instead of one; therefore Walpole, to strengthen a king, made a faction by stock, in preference to enriching the king himself. If our government (including the state sections of it) had given five or six millions annually to itself, every man would have perceived its accession of power; but when it dispenses tine same sum in the mode thought by Walpole to obtain the most power, the accession is hardly seen by any, and is utterly imperceptible to the receivers. It being unquestionably true, that an organization of property by law, is equivalent to an organization of power by law, as Mr. Adams and Lord Shaftsbury assert, it follows, either that the governments of the United States have Dot aright to exercise the first, oi-that they have a right to exercise the second. If it is not our policy that a government can increase its own power by its own will, and if laws for enriching factitious interests will increase its power, by bribing partisans, such laws are subversive of o^jr policy.