Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/647

Rh those who submit to misery, in preference to the humiliation of asking charity."

It is an unalterable law, that man shall be guided by self interest. Governments, therefore, administered by man, though made by constitutions, are maintained, corrupted or destroyed by laws. Legislation in favour of parties of interest, shews that they govern legislation; and in that case they always cut a new government out of any constitution, by a succession of laws, as a statuary cuts a statue of any form out of a rock. The party of interest created in England by paper stock, moulded the government in a century, into the form most suitable to itself; and the celerity observable in the motions of a similar party here, is an evidence of the advantage it derives from the precedent.

Self interest is so ingenious as to deceive both itself and others, by verbal patriotism and false comparisons. The order produced by hereditary magistrates, is compared with the confusion produced by fraudulent laws; superstition is compared with atheism; a well armed and appointed mercenary army, with an unarmed and unorganized militia; and the freedom with the licentiousness of the press. By such arts and arguments, parties of interest effect their selfish purposes. The two artifices of comparing loans with taxes, and war with a dishonorable peace, are most unhappily adapted for consigning nations to those who deal in credit.

The ancient aristocracy perished with idolatry; the modern, rejecting divine descent as no longer tenable, relies for defence on human laws. It is remarkable that Mr. Godwin, discerning no match for aristocracy but aristocracy, (as if the devil could only be controlled by the devil) should propose a theory bottomed upon its essential principle, for the purpose of destroying it. Can a more wicked association of aristocrats be conceived, than the idle, assembled to enact Mr. Godwin's law, for dividing among themselves the property of the industrious. Proteus, in his ugliest form, does not cease to be Proteus. Considering private property as a natural or social right, the observation