Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/63

Rh Mr. Adams's or Lord Shaftsbury's idea of a balance of property.

To display the celerity with which this system collects wealth, and changes forms of government, it is only necessary to recollect, that the mode of monopolizing wealth by conquest, required above six hundred years to destroy the Roman Republick; whereas the system of paper and patronage, by changing the nature of the English government in less than a century, has verified the savage opinion, that certain conjurers by hieroglyphieal representations, could take away life; it transfers property and kills governments by a like graphical art. It paints as many pounds or dollars upon paper as it pleases, which transfers money and power from the holders of land and industry, to the holders of the paper. Let casuists decide between the morality of taking away life in the mode of the Indian conjurer, and taking away property and liberty in the mode of the paper conjurer.

Is it on account of this sorcery, that the aristocracy of the third age considers painting as one of the fine arts, and devotes its whole philosophy to a taste for this species of it? The aristocracies of superstition and ennobled orders, by cultivating the circle of the sciences, checked their passions, and humanized their rule; this cultivates a science to take away the property of its friends, like that used by a savage to take away the life of his foe. The savage passion of vengeance is however appeased, by the death of the father, and thirsts not for the blood of the son; but the passion which seeks property by hieroglyphieal representation, is never appeased, and what it takes from one generation, only whets its malignity towards the next. Is this sorcery really preferable to the ancient modes of aristocracy?

It is universally agreed that power is attracted by wealth. Ten hundred millions of pounds sterling, being a great sum of wealth, must therefore attract some share of power to the paper interest of England. Whatever it attracts was not bestowed by the English form of government, and is of