Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/370

360 Their political and physical similitude, breaks in upon us at every step, abstractedly or experimentally considered. Funded stock, when proposed for national consideration, was announced as a blessing; this blessing was said to be comprised in its increase of capital and industry. The same mantle, stript by publick sagacity, from funded stock, has been with wonderful ingenuity, thrown over bank stock. That also is gravely announced by its inventors as a publick blessing; and why? It will increase capital and industry. The United States detected the shallow artifice under which the designs of funded stock were hidden, because it was moreoyer defended by pretexts, said to be necessities; they cannot see the same artifice spread over the designs of bank stock, because it has no auxiliary; or because we sometimes search in vain for that which lies directly before our eyes.

This common and solitary refuge of our twin namesakes, is simply that of all orders enriched by law and oppression. "It is their opulence," say they, "which gives employment to labour and excites industry," Thus have all such orders. concealed the wealth they extract, and the poverty they inflict. As a justification of banking also, this old mode of concealment requires attention.

Does banking increase capital? It does, if real capital is increased, by increasing paper currency; but if paper currency can at most be considered as capital, when balanced by property and labour, an additional .quantity can no more increase capital, than blowing up poor mutton can increase meal. A redundancy of specie would and form a stationary capital. As birds of passage travel in search of food, specie travels in seach of the real capital it represents; and if the food or employment is insufficient for either concourse, the overplus flies away. If specie could create capital, it would find stationary employment every where From these facts we infer; that money is not capital, but the representative of capital; and that it is inverting the true and genuine relation between capital and money, to suppose that money