Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/567

Rh we must resort to Mr. Adams's book to find a badge, designating stock aristocracy with as much correctness, as a crown designates a king.

This badge he affixes to it in the following maxim: "Money, which all people now desire, and which makes the essential instrument for governing the world." By bestowing on a banking interest "the essential instrument for governing the world," you enable it to govern. Every separate interest, able to govern, does govern. And every separate governing interest, being a minority, must also be an aristocracy.

Let the landed interest compare Mr. Adams's maxim and his system with each other, and it will see the force of this reasoning, and his inconsistency in proposing to make orders by conventions, in the face of his own maxim. What could these orders effect without "the essential instrument for governing the world?" Would the landed interest supply or receive this essential instrument? and will not this instrument make governours of a stock order, as it does of others? Suppose two orders, one poor and didactick, the other possessing the instrument for governing; where would the power settle? The system of dividing lands and amassing a paper interest, creates these orders. Titles and superstition have ceased to constitute aristocracy, among commercial and enlightened nations. Are we not in this class? Shall we then expose our policy and freedom, to the only instrument which creates aristocracy, among enlightened nations, and be content with defending them against title and superstition, which are no longer instruments of tyranny?

The landed interest of the United States, being indissolubly betrothed to commerce, has been considered as so completely covering the interests of the society, that it is used in several states as a substratum of civil government, recognised as republican, by the guarantee in the federal