Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/77

Rh faith, national credit and private property" adapted to nourish and not destroy itself.

If the English ideas of these expressions, have been inculcated by the most complicated and wide spreading system of monopoly which has ever existed; and if this system would not have inculcated such ideas, had they been unfriendly to its ambition and avarice; it follows, that their construction of these expressions being suggested by and friendly to a system of monopoly and aristocracy, must be unfriendly to a system, at enmity with monopoly and aristocracy.

Fraud and ambition can never succeed, except by subtilty. Hence they seize upon our virtues by plausible phrases, and manage nations by prejudices they themselves plant. By these phrases and prejudices they rear and nurture a multitude of opinions, which concur in advancing their designs and interest. Could fraud and ambition be compelled to substitute sincerity in the place of this subtilty, they would acknowledge that the invariable result of their doctrines, is, the sacrifice of a nation to the ambition and avarice of a few; but an acknowledgment of this end, wouid explode all their arguments, however specious: and repeal all their laws, however sanctioned. It is the felicity of the United States, to commence a government at a period, when the aristocracies of the first, the second, and the third ages, have all sincerely and unequivocally displayed their end and purpose, by effects. The purpose of the ideas annexed in England, to the words "publick faith," "national credit" and "charter" is displayed in the state of the people; this, and not the brilliancy of the government or the splendour of individuals, is the object which an honest politician will contemplate. The wealth found by Khouli Khan in Delhi, and the riches collected by Nabobs, were no proofs; of the happiness of Hindostan, or the goodness of its government.

Nations, by false dogmas, have been restrained from defending their liberties, and armies have paid their lives for