Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/607

Rh tary nation, received from the revolution, lias been treated for thirty years with stockjobbing laws; and by throwing away three hundred millions during the same period upon a triiling standing army, without expending a shilling on the militia, an argument has been made against reposing in the latter any future dependence.

The difficulty of proving partial laws to be publick evils, increases as the fact becomes more obvious. As feudal castles and the monkish convents increased, they were thought to yield to nations more defence and more charity, as banks, by an increase of their paper, are said to add to their wealth. The people of England have rejected the defence of the castles, the charity of the convents, and now want bread in the most fruitful of all countries, though tottering under the wealth of paper stock. Such is the effect of enriching capital or cunning by law, of robbing talents and industry of their natural right to divide property, of conveying away national rights by irrepealable laws, and of repealing by laws constitutional principles.

In England the crown lands, though alienated by absolute deeds, have been often resumed, as a publick right, without the power of the king to destroy. Laws for enabling chartered aristocracies of interest to raise a revenue, impair the national ability to defend its liberty; deeds for alienating crown lands, only impaired the ability of a king to maintain his dignity; perhaps his vices. For the first species of right, nations receive nothing; the last was often sold by kings. If the alienation of a fourth of the crown lands was a deduction from the whole, ten millions collected under laws by aristocracies of interest from a national ability to pay forty, must be an equivalent deduction. Can law justly convey publick property to enrich aristocracies of interest or individuals, (publick services being out of the question) though it is forbidden to prerogative, as too fraudulent and oppressive for monarchy? Revenue is more clearly publick property and a publick right, than those crown lands. Unhappily for England, her statesmen discovered, about a century past, that it