Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/345

Rh stock conveys political power. It proclaimed, that less than ten millions of it made a few foreigners, under all the disadvantages of that character, dangerous ; but tiie same authority is silent as to the danger to be apprehended from an hundred millions of bank stock, in the hands of people to whom every branch of the government is open. The United States bank stock held by the English possessed the usual transferable quality, but no one contended that this quality was any security against the pernicious political power annexed to bank stock. If the United States had originally created a government of bank stock, and annexed the entire political power to an hundred millions or any other amount of it, a transferable quality in this stock, would not have expunged the aristocratical qualities of such a government. Had A assigned a share of this stock to B, the latter would have occupied the place of the former in this government, just as a feudal son did that of his dead father. Nor is a transfer of the power annexed to bank stock, from one citizen to another, a better security against that power, than was a transfer of the stock of (he United States' bank, from one Englishman to another, against the political power derived from stock by Englishmen.

The similitude between a stock and a feudal aristocracy is perfect. Money is made the basis of political power in one; land, in the other. The power is not annexed to money in general, but to a portion of it, moulded by law into stock; as in the feudal form it is not annexed to land in general, but to a portion of it, moulded by law into lordships. Those having money but no stock, are excluded from political power in a stock aristocracy ; as those arc, having land but no seigniory, in a feudal one. In both, though money and land possess the same intrinsick value by whomsoever held, portions of each are by the artifice of law, made more valuable than other portions naturally of the same value; and of course more powerful. This identical essence of monopoly, and sole cause of aristocracy, is the same in both eases. If there are two portions of people, each possessing