Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/359

Rh It is as a general position true, that the interest of commerce and agriculture are the same; and we are seduced by the truth of this maxim, to neglect an examination of our subject; concluding, from the great opulence evidently drawn from corporation currency by commercial individuals, that agriculture must be correspondently enriched. The real opulence bestowed by banking on one interest or one place, we see with the eye of the body; the supposed opulence bestowed on the other, we imagine is to be seen by the eye of the mind, through the mirror of a general maxim.

The maxim might be greatly extended. All human interests are the same. Nothing which is vicious or wrong, can be really beneficial to any. The interest of governments and nations is the same. Yet tyranny, mischievous as it is to both, is common. False and factitious interests, are eternally seducing men from true and natural interests; and alliances, intended by nature, are often broken bylaw. A monopoly of commerce, or of a branch of commerce, would enrich the monopolist, but injure the agriculture or manufacture, which supplied the commodity. A monopoly of commerce before the revolution, enriched Britain; the merchant of America ; but it was injurious to our agriculture. To bestow opulence upon an American city by a commercial or paper monopoly, would be nearly as oppressive to agriculture, as to bestow it by the same means on Glasgow. Washington might be enriched by settling there a vast stock income, or sinecure offices to an equal amount; but would this enrich the nation? And if commerce and agriculture may commie hostilities against each other, it would be still more erroneous to cover a monopoly of national currency, by a maxim, which only supposes that commerce and agriculture have the same interest, whilst their pursue their true interest.

Agriculture, formed into an aristocracy by the feudal system, being guided by a false interest, became infinitely less beneficial to commerce, than it would have been, uninfluenced by the spirit of monopoly; and commerce, moulded