Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/69

Rh age. Let us endeavour to discover which of us is fencing with a shadow.

Perhaps the discovery may be made by the following questions. Would a dissertation upon the system of paper and patronage, have explained Mr. Adams's system of cheeks and balances to the people of Greece? If not, can a dissertation upon checks and balances, explain the effects of a system of paper and patronage to the present age? Suppose an author in the fifteenth century, had proved the system of paper and patronage to be right, and inferred, that the feudal aristocracy, or the then existing English government, was therefore the best in the world; would it not have been precisely analogous to an inference, that the now existing English government, under the system of paper and patronage, is also proved to be the best form in the world, by proving the feudal system of the fifteenth century to have been so? In fact, we all see a distinction between the English governments of the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries: where does it lie, except between the systems of checks and balances, and of paper and patronage? One is the feudal, the other the monied aristocracy. For which does Mr. Adams contend? It would be a whimsical event, if the landed interest of the United States, should be induced by Mr. Adams's compliments to the landed aristocracy of the second age, to erect the paper aristocracy of the third. That by being convinced of its own natural right to be a master, it should be induced to become a slave. And that the praises bestowed on its own virtues, should make it blind to the vices of corruption and avarice, nourished by the aristocracy of paper and patronage. Will it be just to punish a wish to erect a landed aristocracy, by making the landed interest a dupe and a victim? If so, Mr. Adams’ dissertation may have the merit of an avenger. For it will hereafter be shewn, that the English system, though it is able to introduce into the United States, the aristocracy of paper and patronage, is unable to introduce a landed aristocracy; and that the landed interest has no alternative,