Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/396

386 follow, are endured, because the process of detection is metaphysical.

If the senses cannot perceive, that the same moral cause will produce similar effects; and that if a fluctuation in the measure of property, by the two first modes, brings oppression, its fluctuation by the third will also bring it; let the mind reflect upon the following supposition, congenial with this third mode. Suppose a corporation, exclusively possessed of the knowledge of assaying metals, to be endow- ed also with the right of coinage, without check or control, or any knowledge in the nation, as to the quantity of money made, or what it was made of. This corporation would resemble banking in all its aspects but one. A banking coinage, by managing fluctuation, or frequently changing the measure of property, may sell dear and buy cheap; it can throw alloy into paper, by the medium of quantity, and take it out by the medium of scarcity, at the national expanse; but the coining corporation have no means of extracting the alloy thrown into gold or silver, without suffering themselves. Herein the cases differ. The coining corporation, can only fleece the nation by putting in the alloy, but the paper corporation can fleece it by taking out as well as by putting in the alloy. This power is an invisible agent, who pares, clips or sweats property at every contract, by making its measure contract or dilate according to his interest.

A nation must have permanent standards for measuring power and property, and perfectly understand their capacity, or cease to be free. If a legislature, though annually elected, can invent a measure, for transferring either to them. selves or their faction, they will make it as capacious as they please. The office of our constitutions, is to take this identical power from our legislatures. A bushel of money absorbs power, or a bushel of power, money, as a bushel of sand does water.

By fraudulent modes of measuring property, nations are universally enslaved. Thus the feudal system enslaved.