can reason justly on the balance of power and property. The maxims draw from hence, are as evident as those of mathematicks. Our increasing knowledge, shows every day what common sense is in politicks."[1]
In a motto, an author condenses his opinion and his subject, to the utmost of his power. This combines a strong idea of the English system, with a stronger approbation of it. No preference can be stronger than one founded in mathematical evidence; and no room remains for farther political discovery, after mathematical demonstration. If the English system possesses this degree of perfection, it excels ours by the confession of our constitutions, in provisions for their own improvement.
Shaftsbury wrote this sentence, about a century past, when the system of paper and patronage was neither understood nor felt in England, and when a portion of the landed wealth of the nobility remained, sufficient to bestow some importance upon that order. What does he say produced these mathematical political maxims of the English system? "A balance of power and property:" power and property are the indissoluble companions by which the system was regulated. If property and nobility became divided, would power and nobility continue united? Neither the actual nor comparative wealth of the English nobility is now what it was a century past. Paper systems, patronage and commerce, have overturned the balance which furnished Shaftsbury's mathematical political maxims. And as according to these maxims, power with mathematical certainty will follow property, so the existence of the aristocracy of paper and patronage, contended for by this essay, is established upon Lord Shaftsbury's principles, and by Mr. Adams's motto.
When Lord Shaftsbury wrote, the balance of property in England was created on the part of the king, by the domains annexed to his office, by certain pecuniary acquisitions
- ↑ In the edition of 1757, the words are " us Britons." — Extracted from, Shaftebury's Charact. v. 1, part 3d, sec. 1. p. 83.
