Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/378

368 will also, like mandarins, draw exclusive wealth and power. If this Chinese monopoly of knowledge, sensibly affects private property, is it inconceivable that a monopoly of credit or currency will also sensibly affect it?

Credit or currency, is unquestionably of the nature of private property, so far as it is able to transfer it. If a government should allege against a charge of having invaded private property, that it only furnished the instrument for taking it away, the charge would be acknowledged. There can be no honest difference between transferring property from private people, to a corporation, directly or indirectly. The moral and constitutional principles, which condemn the one, condemn the other. Not the process, but the injury, constitutes the violation of these principles. Will it be said, that although our governments cannot directly take away publick or private property, and give it to corporations, that they may give them the power of expelling specie, and of transferring property indirectly by corporation currency? Any portion of bank paper, thrown into circulation, represents and transfers some portion of private property from individuals to corporations or to other individuals. If it becomes the only currency, its effect in this operation is constant and great. And the limitation of this transfer, depends on the will of the corporation. Although we have avoided the details of banking as much as possible, it cannot be overlooked, that the liability of the stock only, the unlimited power to issue notes, and the capacity of those notes to transfer property, constitute temptations, which human nature has never been a match for. The nation possessed a national currency; after the complete introduction of a corporation currency, it no longer possesses this species of property. If the national territory was as effectually thrown into the form of a feudal monopoly, as its currency is thrown into that of a banking monopoly, the national territory would be covered by the term "seigniory," as the national currency is now covered by the terms bank notes," and the suppression of the term "national," in both cases, is an