Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/79

Rh immorality, highly vicious. Place iu one scale publick liberty and happiness; in the other, the gratifications of individuals by the system of paper and patronage, with the label "private property" fixed upon these gratifications : morality, it is agreed, ought only to determine which scale should preponderate. Will she too be the dupe of a fraudulent dogma, and a treacherous badge? Will she too devote a nation to oppression and misery, to feed the lusts of individuals, under the influence of a superstitious sanction? A crocodile has been worshipped, and its priesthood have asserted, that morality required the people to suffer themselves to be eaten by the crocodile ; to encourage them, the people might also have been told, that the crocodile would die in time, and that then, they would be no longer eaten. In this species of morality the people believed, and whenever the old crocodile was about to expire, a young one was put in his place, and the people continued to be eaten. Law charters arc a family of those crocodiles.

Publick faith is the moral principle, called upon to defend monopoly and law charter, under the name of private property. Let us consider what this sanction is in a free government. If the government should solemnly, by law, enter into a contract with a number of individuals, the object of which was to diminish the liberty and wealth of the people, by increasing the power and wealth of the government and these individuals, does publick faith require From the nation a fulfilment of this contract? If the question is answered in the negative, a correct definition of publick faith must comprise both a faithfulness to the publick good, and also a faithfulness in contracts with individuals; nor can these two duties be made inconsistent with each other by publick faith, without admitting it to be a principle of a double character, sometimes good and sometimes had. Because, if it compels the performance of one duty, by the breach of another; and if the duty required to be fulfilled, is trivial, compared with that required to be infringed; it would bestow on publick faith a mixed character, and even