Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/579

Rh ereating or balancing orders or separate interests, civil or religious. Laws for maintaining a balance of property among orders, necessary to sustain an aristocracy, however disguised, defeat every such principle of our policy.

By suffering industry to distribute property, industry will be created. It teaches no vice. It bestows health and content. It is a pledge of virtue. It double our happiness by enabling us to blend with it the happiness of others. Its benefits reiterate and spread like the undulations of the waves. Yet the hags, feudality, hierarchy, privilege and stock, have successively been preferred as regulators of private property, to this charming goddess. The distribution of property by law, first introduces into a government what I shall call an aristocracy of parties; and an appearance of this species of aristocracy, is a proof that its pabulum exists. The few who contend for prizes, arrange a nation into parties, who zealously plead for and against each set of distributees, both having in view the goods and chattels of the infatuated advocates.

The similitude between party and aristocracy, is explained by Mr. Hume's distinction between an aristocracy of individuals, and one consisting of a separate interest; exemplifying the first by the Polish, and the second by the Venetian nobility. An aristocracy or party of individuals, consists of a few Polish noblemen, at the head of an ignorant and obedient mass of followers. An aristocracy or party of interest, consists of a conclave of individuals, united for the end of defrauding others to enrich themselves. In the same essay Mr. Hume has said, that free governments are most happy for those who partake of their freedom, but most ruinous and oppressive to their provinces. They dispense ruin and oppression to provinces, as the inevitable effect of a separate interest. The certainty of this moral law, is nearly demonstrated in the relation between England and Ireland, and quite so in India. If a free government is converted by a power of distributing wealth by law, into an oppressive aristocrary of its provinces, every species of aris-