Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/398

388 powder which produces the effects of moral artillery. The powder of banking is precisely the same, with that used by the feudal system, hierarchy and patronage, to batter human liberty; namely, a distribution of property, not by industry, but by law. Wherein consists the oppression of monarchy and aristocracy, except in being such modes of measuring property? Wherein consists the fraud of these Diodes, except in making this distribution, by the unjust measures, law, and fluctuating adulterated money, instead of leaving it to be made by the just measures, industry, and money of a steady and known carat?

We have supposed the case of one state, erected by congress into a corporation, with the exclusive power of supplying the others with bank currency. Let us subjoin to the supposition, the idea of the incorporated state being mercantile, and the others, agricultural. How forcibly are the effects illustrated, of a power in one dealer, to regulate the value of the currency, or the capacity of the measure, by which the price of property is regulated for both. The whole agricultural interest, unadulterated by any commixture with the banking interest, occupies the precise place of the unprivileged states. In the case supposed, the oppression would not be borne for. a moment; because the suffering being would be equal in union, sagacity and power, to the inflicting being. It is borne in the case existing, because the suffering beings, arc unequal in union, sagacity and power, to the inflicting beings. Individual ignorance, passion and folly, is no match for corporate knowledge, calmness and cunning. To let loose upon a nation, a faction, enlisted and disciplined by charters and avarice, for the purpose of gathering money of individuals, is a project, equivalent to that of letting loose a veteran army upon an undisciplined militia.

Banking exclaims, let individuals shift for themselves. A band of conjurers or robbers, requires only that individuals should be left to shift for themselves. Individuals can never defend themselves against associations. The design