Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/385

Rh to prevent either from destroying the other by this instrument; or to be subjected to some other cheek. Armies will enslave their country, after they have bled for it; therefore they must be checked by an armed nation; funding systems bleed their country, and unless they are more patriotick than armies, they seem to be an object of equal danger.

The army mode of enslaving the nation, is not left to the exclusive control of election. Military men are excluded from legislatures, and whilst the general government may raise an army, the states may arm, officer and discipline the militia.

If banking is inconsistent with the positive rules of our constitutions, or adverse to their general principles, the laws upon the subject are void. But supposing it only transfers property unfairly, and to be as dangerous to liberty as funding, it cannot plead national necessity as a subterfuge against annihilation; and what friend to free government would hesitate to annihilate the power of borrowing, if there was a certainty that the national defence would never render it necessary? But it can plead charters; the Lord deliver us from charters! Admit that the banking system ought not to have existed, yet these sanctions for evil say that it shall continue to exist.

A history of charters would afford vast amusement and instruction to nations; it would terminate in ascertaining, that orders have practised as insidiously behind these, as behind altars. Such as are improvidently granted by nations, or corruptly by governments, are said, like the oracles, to be sacred; but those obtained by nations or individuals from orders, are disregarded or destroyed, as interest or ambition dictates. English municipal law, applies to the charters to be revoked in favour of orders, the term obreptitious, implying, that they were obtained by surprise, or by a concealment of their effects; in which cases they are to be vacated. But it has no term or process, recognising a right in nations to resume improvident grants, or to annul