Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/556

544 defrauding man of his liberty and property. By the first, he is represented as sailing in an ocean of atmosphere, with a limited stock of food on board, and he is told that nothing can save him from famine, but a power in a few of the crew, to regulate the births and deaths. The second asserts, that the same minority, by modifications of rags and ink, can multiply wealth or the means of supplying his wants, without limitation. It happens, not unfrequently, that the same individual believes, both that the earth is inadequate to the production of bread sufficient to meet population, and that paper can produce endless wealth. As if nature had forgotten to provide subsistence for her creature, man; and remembered to provide it for his creature paper stock. Nature! who like the fates, is ever spinning and cutting, whose business is production and destruction, and who has worked equally hitherto, with both her hands.

The first of these chimerical systems, by infusing a feverish zeal for educating a whole nation, has rather checked than encouraged the progress of knowledge. Projects for turning all men into philosophers, advance knowledge, as those for turning all metals into gold, advance wealth. Godwin's system is an enchantress; Malthus's, a gorgon. But it is equal to mankind, whether they are enticed into ignorance and slavery by the captivating imagination of equalising knowledge and property, or terrified into it, by the dread of a redundant population.

A theory built upon the whole, and not upon a part only, of man's moral character, can constitute a real foundation for a government; just as earth, not vapour, must be a foundation for a house. Mr. Godwin deserts the practicable remedies of division of power and responsibility, by which the evil portion of man's nature may be controlled, for the impracticable idea of rendering this control unnecessary, by changing that portion of his nature. Mr. Adams insists, that this portion of the human