Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/374

364 own earnings, is the best mode to which all orders, titled or stock, can resort for her encouragement, it is evident that the mode would be improved, by making the opinion true. Fulfilment would be a stronger excitement to industry, than disappointed hope.

The true sanction of private property, consists in its effect to stimulate men to industry, and the improvement of the understanding ; from the consideration that they will enjoy whatever their knowledge and industry may gain. Exactly the reverse of this sanction, and this effect, is the doctrine, that knowledge or industry will be excited and increased, by transferring a portion of their gains from themselves, to orders, hereditary, titled, hierarchical or stock. Although all such orders profess themselves to be encouragers of knowledge and industry, and friends to private property, it is hence evident, that they either deceive themselves, or attempt to deceive others.

An idea, heretofore suggested, seems of sufficient importance to be again brought to mind, for the sake of arguments, which have since occurred. It is that which supposes the credit of nations to be property, of a species, as far beyond the power of a government to give away to corporations, as any other species.

Currency and credit are social rights, in a state of appropriation, and not a species of wild game, to be seized and bestowed by governments, any more than other social rights. To save, not to sell or give away such rights, constitutes the utmost power of free governments. To bestow on corporations, by charters, an exclusive right of uttering currency, is more exceptionable, than to give or sell to them an exclusive right of uttering new patents for land, because every individual owns a share of the national credit, which is not the case as to land. Or considering the nation's land, in a territorial view, as equivalent to the nation’s credit, the dismemberment of one, would be a question equivalent to the dismemberment of the other.