Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/340

330 filled the old world with crimes, and perverted the primitive end of society to secure property, by making it the instrument for its invasion. Is the new world destined to copy this old process, and suffer its dispensations?

This essay has been written for the purpose of inquiring by what interest mankind ought to be governed, natural and general, or artificial and particular. It considers industry, effort and talents, as constituting the first class, and law and charters, for enriching individuals or factions, as constituting the second. Without pursuing the details to which the subject would lead, it has selected a few of the latter, to illustrate its reasoning, but not as containing a history or exhibition of the whole class of artificial and particular interests, by which mankind have been oppressed. In this selection, feudal, hierarchical and stock, arc the particular interests, of whose history most use has been made, as they have succeeded each other in England. The stock tyrant, the present metropolitan of the benefice called Britain, is said to be fair and just, because those who chose to do so, might subscribe to banks or loans. To the arguments used in another place for detecting this fallacy, the following are added. The mode by which a tyrant succeeds to his tyranny, cannot convert oppression into justice. If offices, productive of mischief to a nation, were like bank shares exposed to sale, could the purchasers justify the mischief, by urging, that any one who had money, might have purchased? Several Romans purchased the empire. Could they justify a right to tyrannize, because any other person, rich enough, might have also purchased? Could a lottery for distributing the titles and privileges of an aristocratick nobility be fair, 'because all those of a nation able to pay for them, might buy tickets? Did the neighing of Darius's horse make his government legitimate, because seven persons possessed tickets in the lottery, or would it have been legitimate, if seven thousand had shared in the chance?