Among the instruments of oppression, the hereditary are most excusable and least oppressive, and those bought the least excusable and most oppressive. The former are
thrust by birth into tyranny; the latter purchase it with a
deliberate malice against justice and liberty. The mischiefs of the hereditary tyrant are limited by his physical
imbecilities; those of a bought separate interest, are extended by a boundless moral energy. If a title by birth,
by lot or by purchase, would not have justified or softened
the tyranny of a Tiberius, a Caligula, or a Nero, how can a
title by either justify or soften the tyranny of the more lasting and extended feudal, hierarchical or stock tyranny?
One tyrant may thank God that he is not another tyrant. Banking may say that it is not a hierarchy or noble order. It will admit that charters for establishing such orders are criminal, and contend for the innocence of its own; just as the nobility and bishops of France, once held mercantile charters in the highest contempt, and their own in the highest respect. When Europe was torn to pieces by the principle of bestowing exclusive wealth and privileges on religious sects, each sect contended that the remedy for the evil, lay in its own possession of this wealth and these privileges. It was found however by the United States, to lie in the abrogation of them all. Mr. Adams's book, by changing a few names, might be easily converted from a system for balancing civil orders against each other, into one for balancing religious sects in the same way; and when the most powerful of these sects, were intriguing, lighting and negociating to find out this balance of wealth and power among themselves, those who expected to gain by the doctrine, would allow it to be classical. The balance of religious sects, however, could never be found, and the privileges bestowed upon them by law, charter or treaty, were only apples of discord thrown into society. Such apples are the privileges of civil sects. These inflame the zeal for wealth, as those did the zeal for religion. The former zeal burns
