Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/382

372 The example of a commercial partnership, consisting of one thousand persons, supplying different quotas of stock, will still illustrate the argument. We will suppose that the stock of the wealthiest individual of the partnership, amounted to one thousand dollars, and of the poorest, to one; and that the intermediate space, was occupied by a great variety of sums, constitution; the stock of the other partners. The profits are the property of the partnership, and ought to be proportioned according to the stock of each individual. The partner entitled to one thousand dollars, ought to have one thousand times more than the partner entitled to one dollar of the stock. But if you give him two, three or four thousand times more, than you give to the partner having one dollar stock, you rob this p )or partner, and all the intermediate partners, of a portion of their property, and give it to the rich partner. By suffering the rich partner to take his thousand dollars out of the partnership, and leave only his credit behind, he acquires its value in property, besides retaining the double interest to acquire more property. Society is this partnership; bankers, the partners who draw more property than their money or that of other’s represents; cunning and rich bankers, those who take away their stock, or a portion of it, and continue to draw this overplus of property and the poor partner represents those, not bankers, and limited to draw property in strict proportion to the value of their money.

National currency is the stock representing national property, as mercantile capital represents partnership profit. This stock is unequally divided, but it is entitled to a proportional value in property, as mercantile capital is in profit. Banking enables about one in a thousand of a nation to draw" out of the national stock of property, considerably more than his share of national currency entitled him to, which unjust overplus is a deduction from the property of the other members of the society; just as any mode, direct or indirect, by which one partner could get more than his proportional share of mercantile profit, transfers to him.