Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/75

Rh right, led them to extort charters from their princes; but wofully is the doctrine of deriving a right to liberty from charters, turned upon this gallant nation. By allowing them to bestow, it was discovered that they could destroy. Such as diminish, and not those which enlarge national freedom, have become the sacred charters. The errour of parchment liberty, has made liberty the creature of parchment. A government, good or bad, can easily take away that liberty by charters, which was created by charters. Before the idea of deriving liberty from charter or compact became fashionable, the evils produced by bad governments were temporary; now, slavery, as liberty condescended to be, is created by charters, to as to perpetuate these evils, and to hem in the efforts of patriotism so narrowly, as to destroy the effect of virtue in office.

By admitting that donations of publick property by a government to individuals, should irrevocably transform it into private property, it is obvious that the stock of publick rights will be continually whittled away. Tyranny is only a partial disposition of publick rights, in favour of one or a few. The system of paper and patronage, bottomed upon charters and commissions, enables avarice and ambition to draw more extensively upon the national stock, than any system hitherto invented. It can convert publick property into private, with unexampled rapidity, or transfer wealth and power from the mass of a nation to a few. Its guilt is made its sanction. Neither "private nor publick property" is allowed to be a sanction against the frauds and invasions of paper and patronage, until the fraud or invasion is committed; and then "private property" (good words, as are "publick faith and national credit") is converted into a dogma for the protection of this fraud and invasion. Titles, tythes, feudal services, monasteries, South Sea and Mississippi projects, funding and banking systems, sinecure offices, and every species of fraud, monopoly and usurpation, call the pillages of private property, private property, and generally contrive to make it so by laws or armies.