Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/391

Rh cosmography, A man, by becoming a law-maker, contrives to make the reputation of wealth more profitable to him than wealth itself. If a true opinion as to one's wealth. ought not to plunder a nation, the rights of falsehood are thus made greater than the rights of truth. The means used by the credit men in England, to lay industry under contribution, are used by the men of actual property in the United States, to lay themselves under contribution. The richest interest in the United States, is the agricultural. It does not hold by the tenure of its land, a shilling of the credit which sustains banking; and the small portion of bank stock it possesses, bears no proportion to its landed property. Yet it first mortgaged itself to enrich a poor speculating interest by the funding system, under the delusion of supporting a false national credit; and it again mortgages itself to enrich a banking interest, under the delusion, that it receives, and does not pay the profits of appreciating paper in the last, as in the first form.

In other countries, if the rich are knaves, they are not blind to their own interest. They inflict taxes, direct, indirect and intricate, of which they pay a part; but they take care to receive most or all. If these taxes are paid to armies, churches, navies, pensions or sinecures, they are received by the rich or their children. The paper interest in England, is willing to pay a small part of the enormous tax, drawn from the nation by paper stock, because it receives all; and the landed interest of the United States, is willing to introduce this fathomless mode of taxation here, because it pays nearly all, and receives a small part.

In the United States, the civil offices cost but little, and do not exceed the legitimate necessities of civil government. We have no armies, churches, navies, pensions or sinecures, contrived for the purpose of conveying to the richest class of citizens, the money drawn directly or indirectly from the nation. Stock, bank and funded, are the only modes hitherto used for drawing money from the many for the few; an