Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/377

Rh press; and that the sanction of the right, not the marks of the division, being the basis of property, this sanction must be equally strong in relation to land and credit or currency, if it can reach both, and must be equally violated by distributing either by law.

Commerce is called national like credit and currency. It is less capable of a division among the people than credit, or currency. Is it not a species of property, both publick and private? As publick, it is an object of taxation. As private and publick, our government cannot charter it entirely or in portions to corporations, because in our society, there exists only two appropriations of property, publick and private ; the first as payment for publick services, to be made by law : the second, the acquisition of private people, which no law can transfer to other private people.

There is no distinguishing between commerce, credit and currency, as objects of social property. This indelible similarity admits only of two inferences ; either that our constitutions have surrendered both to be appropriated to individuals or corporations, by the charters of our governments, or that they have surrendered neither.

Knowledge, at first view, seems to possess less of the nature of property, than lands, commerce, credit or currency; yet a legal monopoly of knowledge, is inconsistent with our principals. The compulsion to buy corporation currency, produced by banishing national currency, greatly resembles the compulsion to buy hereditary knowledge, by banishing national knowledge. To buy corporation currency to carry on trade, seems as absurd as to buy hereditary knowledge to carry on government. The Chinese monopoly of knowledge, is an illustration still stronger than the hereditary. An order, by prohibiting the use of an alphabet (the coin of knowledge) produces national ignorance, and thence draws with its exclusive knowledge, exclusive wealth and power. By the banishment of specie (the coin of fair and free commerce) and the substitution of hieroglyphicks con- fined to a species of mandarin, the privileged individuals.