some other combination of men, at the expense of the national interest, both moral and pecuniary, it obviously
makes a false proclamation, and the question is, whether
the genuine sanction of law, or this false proclamation,
ought to be most sacred. Without leaving our subject to
consider the device of consecrating these spurious laws, beyond the genuine, and even beyond constitutional law itself,
it falls within it to consider the character of a separate or
exclusive interest, which invariably dictates them.
It is happily hit off unintentionally by Mr. Addison in his
third Spectator, where he personifies publick credit, by a
virgin, enthroned on gold in the hall of the bank of England; surrounded by funding laws; delighted with contemplating them; timorous; a valetudinarian; suddenly withering; suddenly reviving; converting whatever she touched into gold, which would as suddenly vanish or become
tallies, if she was affrighted; fainting and dying at the
sight of a commonwealth; and revived by monarchy.
By mistaking the exclusive interest called funding, for
publick credit, Mr. Addison has described the character of
paper stock. Gold, and not virtue, is the terrestrial deity
of this allegorical being, so improperly represented as a virgin. She admits promiscuous and loathsome embraces to
acquire it. Wealth rises as if by magick around her, as
around fraud and theft. It disappears upon the least rust-
ling of danger; as a robber hides his booty. She is timorous from conscious guilt. She is a sickly moral being, because she is formed of bad moral principles. She faints and
dies under a commonwealth, because she cannot live within
the pale of common interest, and can only subsist on its
destruction; and she is revived by monarchy, a congenial
being, which aids this fearful, sickly, fainting, reviving, magical and wicked being, by surrounding her with consecrated law charters.
Contrast genuine and honest publick credit, with this thievish spectre, and assign the privilege of consecrating
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