Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/76

66 But in the eye of justice, property, publick or private, cannot be transferred by fraud. A nation erects a government for the publick benefit, and does not empower it to bring about the aggrandisement of itself, and its faction, to the publick detriment. If this is effected by a transfer of property, publick or private, the transfer is fraudulent, and void I because the nation never empowered the government, by that or any other mode, to injure its liberty or happiness. The principles of moral rectitude, do not forbid a nation to resume power, usurped by a government; nor property, chartered away to individuals, by fraudulent laws; because otherwise they could not resume just rights, since power and law are the vehicles in which these rights are constantly taken away.

The ideas annexed to the words "publick faith, national credit and private property" in England, may be correct in reference to the English civil policy, and erroneous in relation to the civil policy of the United States. Monopoly is the leading principle of their political, religious, and mercantile systems; every thing the reverse of monopoly, constitutes our political, religious and mercantile systems. The king, with his annual million, his prerogatives, and his patronage, made up of fleets, armies, offices, and corruption; a house of inheritable legislation, without responsibility entrenched behind the crown, and flanked with privileges; a house of commons, purchasers of diplomas bestowing an exclusive power to tax and to receive; a hierarchy, tythe gatherers and test makers; mercantile corporations, masters of kingdoms and islands; a bank of England, which can make it unlawful to pay its own debts; a funding system, mortgaging the nation for more money than the world possesses; a multitude of places obsolete, except as to fees and salaries; and a variety of rights and privileges, exercised by corporations, trades, companies and districts—form a vast mass of monopoly, which in a multitude of ways incorporates with itself the talents and power of the nation, and has therefore annexed ideas to the words "publick