Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/397

Rh The fraud consisted in accumulating land in the hands of a few, under pretence of compensating these few for defending a multitude. The papal hierarchy became a tyranny from a fraudulent mode of measuring property or earth, by the artifice of selling heaven. Patronage generates despotism, simply from being a fraudulent mode of measuring property; it is not an empty office, but the wealth which it transfers or measures out from the many to the few, in which its tyranny consists. Ail these are modes of oppression, only because they are fraudulent modes of measuring property. They are indirect, but money is the direct mode of this mensuration. Though money is limited to specie, and should possess the steady value of a known and fixed carat, yet these indirect modes enslave nations by measuring out property unfairly. But if money, the direct mode of measuring all property, can be made to fluctuate in value or capacity, by a few corporations, the operation in transferring and accumulating property, must be infinitely more rapid, than the operation of any indirect mode; and the effect infinitely more certain. It is this operation which terminates in tyranny, whether it is produced, directly or indirectly, by fraud, accident or pretended necessity. By ending in accumulation, sufficient to beget a separate interest, the tyranny follows of course. Whether banking therefore is founded in fraud or honesty, in deception or sincerity, is unimportant to the inquiry. So long as it is a mode of measuring property unequally by law, and not by industry, capable of begetting a separate interest in a nation, it must produce the effect produced by the feudal, hierarchical and patronage systems; because the effect of all three flowed from their being modes of measuring out property unequally by law, so as to beget a separate interest in a nation. Throughout the history of the civilized world, the admeasurement of property by industry, has bred patriots; by law, traitors to the liberty and happiness of nations. Will the form of a caliber, render a ball propelled by the same force, harmless? Principle is the