Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/375

Rh The term "national," applied to currency and credit, furnishes an argument in favour of their positions. 'I'he use of a term descriptive of appropriation, proves that currency and credit are appropriated. All property is under the sanction of a twofold species of appropriation in society. It is appropriated to the use of the nation, for publick defence, and the administration of the government. After this object is satisfied, it is appropriated to the use of the individuals composing the nation. But there is not in free countries any appropriation, to the use of a government, called party or administration territory, commerce or credit, to be chartered by it to individuals or factions. On the contrary, this third kind of appropriation, constitutes a violation of publick and private property, and the difference between free and despotick governments.

The right and property of national credit, territory and commerce, are of the same nature; and it equally violates a policy, founded in the principles of liberty, for a government to charter away portions of one, as portions of another. Those minor appropriations of credit, land or commerce, produced by the talents, labour and industry of individuals, or by the municipal law which embraces every member of a society, are of the second species of appropriation, and distinct from the third. The principles of political morality admit only of the appropriation of property, in the two first modes, and reject the third, as unnecessary for a government, inconsistent with the ends of its institution, and the ground work of civilized tyranny.

A transfer of private or publick property, or both, from individuals or nations, to orders, corporations or to other individuals, is the evil moral principle, in which all hereditary and hierarchical orders have been founded, and of course, in plain hostility with any principles, capable of being assigned as the ground work of the government of the United States.