Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/651

Rh revoking the right of representation ; because these parties freely give him the money of the nation for a good share of it. The poverty of the English nobility, compared with its wealth before the abolition of perpetuities, has exposed the house of Lords to the full effect of the modern modes for guiding the house of Commons. Can we more clearly discern Mr. Adams's idea of a beautiful balance of orders in England, either in the original feudal parliamentary constitution, or in its existing modification, than we can Dr. Henry's, of a beautiful English constitution somewhere hidden, in a short, frivolous and dead code of civil laws. called magna charta? If this is a just picture of the English government, with what reason has Mr. Adams eulogized it? With what reason has Publius or the Federalist, assigned to it the rank among governments, which Homer bears among poets? And with what reason are politicians introducing parties of interest, the present poison of that, into our form of government?

Let us count the cost of the modern English system to that nation, to place before our eyes what the same system will cost here. It draws from the nation into its unappeasable avarice, not less than one hundred millions of pounds sterling annually. If the English king was to ask the nation for one third of its lands only, the dullest man would see that despotick power must grow out of such excessive wealth; but an annual receipt by himself and the parties of interest leagued to the crown, of more than the rent-roll of the whole, has hidden the despotism in an aggravated degree, under the various covers these parties of interest are bribed to throw over it. England and Scotland contain about fifty millions of acres of land. It is probable that an average rent of twenty shillings an acre would exceed its value, and certain, that double this rent would do so. Legislation, exercising a power of distributing wealth, has then in England already disposed of all the land of the kingdom, or its income. In the United States, the same system has not yet ripened into equal maturity. But such