Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/635

Rh earth has been unable to equal, ought to be measured by their envy; and when this envy shall cease, no reason for our gratitude will exist. His apprehension glances at its termination, but he has contracted a great idea, after he had almost compassed it, down to nothing, by the epithet "mercantile." Knowing that guile and venality led the way to despotism, but seeing none established by our political laws, he turned his eye towards the mercantile, and overlooked the capacity of civil law to issue it in copious streams. The mercantile, concealed like guilt in the breast of an individual, bears no resemblance to the political, published like justice in the face of the statute book. One never destroyed a free government; the other never failed to do it, unless the nation destroyed that. When the English clergy owned 28,115 knights' fees out of 60,215 into which the whole kingdom was divided, the guile and venality of this party of interest, made it the pest and the tyrant of the country for five centuries. If our exports amount to $10,000,000, twenty of which are expended in taxes and the sustenance of labour, and the banks have already gotten a moiety of the remaining twenty, they have outstript the monks in availing themselves of the civil law mode of growing rich. The clerical party of interest contended successfully for a long time, that to tax it was wicked; the banking has successfully advanced the same doctrine. The clerical intrigued with kings and beneficed the sons of no- bies, to obtain the support of the government; the banking bribes governments, and infuses stock into agriculture. The clerical pretended to bestow heaven on the laity; and the banking pretends to bestow wealth on labour.

The republican principle of general or publick interest, cannot be successfully assailed by the mercantile guile and venality of individuals. But the guile and venality emitted by civil law in the shape of a party of interest, endeavours, by every expedient, to cut up the general interest, for the sake of its own safety or aggrandizement; and soars above little individual frauds in the sunshine of legislative favour