Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/47

Rh Experience, it is agreed, has exploded the promises or oracles; does it not testify also to those of paper stock?

Paper stock always promises to defend a nation, and always flees from danger. America and France saved themselves by physical power, after danger had driven paper credit out of the field. In America, so soon as the danger disappeared, paper credit loudly boasted of its capacity to defend nations, and though a deserter, artfully reaped the rewards due to the conqueror. In France, it transferred to fraud and avarice the domains which ought to have aided in defending the nation, or to have been restored to the former owners.

Paper credit is a disciple of the doctrine, that truth is best ascertained by the sword. The utmost exertion it has ever made to enlighten the mind, was by this instrument. And the crusade against France, in preference to leaving to the arbitrament of man's intellectual powers, an estimate of fair experience, is a proof that it only counts its own interest, and forgets the evils it inflicts. Otherwise, could paper credit have inflicted upon Britain all the calamities of a war, to be closed by her ruin, or by a debt of several hundred millions of pounds sterling, merely to prevent the, French from forming a government for France?

Had there existed in England, a single chaste organ for expressing and enforcing the public interest, this crusade to guide opinion, would have been escaped by England, as it was by America; and if no such organ did exist, to what but the system of patronage and paper was it owing? It is therefore a menstruum, capable of dissolving the several sections of a government, however divided, into one interest or centre; and of infusing the most unprincipled avarice, and ambition into the mass.

Sinecure, armies, navies, offices, war, anticipation and taxes, make up an outline of that vast political combination, concentrated under the denomination of paper and patronage. These, and its other means, completely enable it to take from the nation as much power and as much wealth.