Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/373

Rh the eye of comparison, almost to nothing; and of course in my own eyes. No, I will go into the lottery where there are no blanks; where every ticket draws annual prizes; and where, as a stockjobber, I may be as rich, as idle, as ignorant, and as useless, as a bishop, nobleman or king. What will the world say of our experiment to establish a free government, if an epithet, universally considered as far more humiliating than those of bishop, nobleman or king, should become the title of a separate order or interest in the United States?

This mode of encouraging industry, by creating rich and idle orders to give it employment, has been practised in various forms, but all contain the same principle. Hereditary and hierarchical orders, encourage industry in the same way as stock orders do; by taxing it to maintain themselves in idleness and affluence. The lash is applied to slaves, and taxation to freemen, to encourage industry. Masters and orders praise the effect of both causes, to gain wealth and leisure for themselves. If one evil has been imposed by a foreign nation on this country, should it therefore impose the other on itself?

When debt stock boasts that it is an encourager of industry, it refers to the stimulus of taxation; yet it attempts by every artifice, to conceal from the people the cause of this vaunted effect. Bank stock also boasts of the same merit, but it pretends that an abundance of money, and not the goad of taxation, is its cause. The first, by hiding the cause of the effect it claims, confesses its treachery not more conspicuously than the second, by pretending that it encourages industry by a superfluity of money. Are extortion and donation, a robber and a prodigal, equally encouragers of industry? I, says debt stock, encourage industry, by taking way your money; and I, says bank stock, by pouring money into your pockets. When, by theory or experience, has it ever been said, that either the redundancy of money, or the loss of earnings, was an encouragement to industry? If the calculation of a false opinion, that industry enjoys her