Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/64

54 course an inconstitutional and revolutionary acquisition. This must be admitted, or it must be proved, that great wealth acquired by a particular interest, does not attract power. If the system of paper and patronage, will destroy the principles of limited monarchy without changing its forms, either by amalgamating king, lords and commons, or by creating a new power, may it not also destroy the principles of a republican government, and leave its form also standing?

United interests, or an aggregation of wealth by one interest, are equally at enmity with Mr. Adams's system of a balance of power and property; and if the system of paper and patronage produces both or either, his cannot exist a moment in communion with that. An unconquerable enmity in theory and principle, would crown an attempt to foster both these systems, with several ludicrous inconsistencies. Mr. Adams's system requires an illustrious, high- spirited, enlightened, virtuous and wealthy house of Lords: and the system of paper and patronage would fill it with the spawn of stockjobbing and corruption. How long will it require to purge off the contaminations of the father before the son will be well born? Or will not the system of paper and patronage recontaminate faster, than the generative process can purify, so as to prevent Mr. Adams from ever collecting the necessary qualities in his noble senate? Without superior qualities, his system does not contend for superior distinction; but it is notorious that the system of paper and patronage peoples the two houses of parliament in England, and so completely moulds their character, that all sorts of men, make the same sort of lords and commons.

We may conceive the manner in which the aristocracy of the third age is consolidated with a government, by supposing the territory to be represented by a multitude of landscapes, which the government could transfer with the lands they represented, just as it transfers wealth by pictures of money. Would not the individuals who administered the government, take to themselves some of these landscapes?