Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/80

70 a prevalence of evil. Publick faith then, considered as a good moral principle, must either include and reconcile, a loyalty both to the publick good and to contracts with individuals; or if the former is not a duty imposed by publick faith, it must be a duty of superior and superseding obligation.

The construction of publick faith by monopoly, avarice and ambition, is precisely the reverse of this. They confine it to a fulfilment of every species of contract made by a government with individuals, especially if entered into for the purpose of gratifying themselves at the expense of a nation; and thus limited, consider it as the most sacred of all duties. And so far are these glossographers, from considering publick faith as a good moral principle, that they make it enforce contracts, entered into for every conceivable vicious purpose; from those of betraying nations, armies, cities and forts, down to those of perjury, theft and assassination. Under this construction, whenever the publick good and a contract with an individual come in conflict, publick faith is made to decide, that the contract shall prevail; and thus its definition will come out, "national duty to suffer oppression, and lose its liberty, by laws, charters or contracts, made by a government for that purpose, "provided they convey an interest to individuals." So soon as it is thus changed from a good to a vicious principle, its effects change also. From being a pledge of publick good, it becomes the protector of political fraud; it compels a nation to be an accomplice in its own ruin; it takes from it the right of self-preservation; and it becomes the modern subterfuge of the modern aristocracy.

Hitherto, in comparing the duty of a government to a nation, and to a law charter, the comparison has been exhibited in the most favourable light for the latter, by forbearing to insist upon any degree of criminality in a faction, which accepts of a charter from a government, injurious to a nation. It is, however, questionable, whether the priesthood were innocent, which executed the evil of hierarchy;