Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/175

Rh It follows, that a community governed by men in trade, or which is materially influenced by men in trade, is governed without any fixed principles, every thing being made to yield to the passing interests of the hour, those interests being too engrossing to admit of neglect, or postponement.

It is a mistake to suppose commerce favorable to liberty. Its tendency is to a monied aristocracy, and this, in effect, has always been the polity of every community of merchants. Commerce is an enemy of despotic power in the hands of a prince, of church influence, and of hereditary aristocracies, from which facts it has obtained its reputation of sustaining freedom; but, as a class, merchants will always be opposed to the control of majorities.

The true office of commerce is to facilitate exchanges of articles between men, to the amount that their wants and interests require; but as every transfer of property leaves a profit with the merchant, he has a disposition to increase his gains, by pushing his transactions beyond the just limits of trade. This disposition is best checked by the penalties of bankruptcies, but, in a country like this, in which no such penalty exists, the consequence is to produce an unbroken succession of commercial reverses, that affect the value of all the property in the nation, almost periodically.

Commerce is entitled to a complete and efficient protection in all its legal rights, but the moment it presumes to control a country, or to substitute its fluctuating expedients for the high principles of natural justice that ought to lie at the root of every political system, it should be frowned on, and rebuked.

The merchant who is the immediate agent in paying the duties on goods, has no more claims than another, as the money eventually comes from the